A Distributed Operation Architecture of MOOCs for Open Experiments

Abstract

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), rising in higher education recent years, is a new type of course mode, teaching mode and/or learning pattern with such outstanding features as open learning resources in free, humanistic teaching concept, remote, synchronous and interactive online learning experience, learners with huge scale, diversification of identity and levels of knowledge and independent learning. Compared with traditional education and classroom teaching, MOOCs have become a breakthrough innovation, and attracted more and more widespread concerns from society. Consequently, a distributed operation architecture of MOOCs is proposed in this paper for MOOCs sponsors and/or teachers capable of providing learners with networked open experimental platform through unattended open laboratory (UOL), so that learners are more easily enabled to span space-time boundary to carry out open experiments for deepening their understanding and mastering of theoretical knowledge, enhancing the ability of solving practical problems.