USING MOODLE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES

Abstract

In the last few years there has been an increasing development of Massive Open Online Courses led by faculty and IT specialists from top universities such as Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Caltech, Harvard and others. Hundreds of courses are available to people all over the world on MOOC platforms such as Coursera, edX, or Udacity. European MOOC platforms are also developing rapidly. Most of the courses are developed in English language, but there are also other languages available. What we propose is the development of a Romanian MOOC platform using Moodle as the e-learning environment. The reason we propose Moodle for such an initiative is because it is the e-learning platform mostly used in Romania, familiar both to teachers and technical advisers and administrators. The paper presents an example of using Moodle for the development of a Romanian Massive Open Online Course, emphasizing the ease of use for all the actors involved: teachers, learners and administrators. The facilities offered by Moodle in the development of online learning experiences and of a Romanian MOOC platform are also discussed. The paper focuses on technical aspects regarding the configuration of the platform according to the pedagogical requirements demanded by such courses as well as a proposal of a course template to be filled up with graphical elements, video sequences and also quizzes in different formats. We will underline the configuration aspects of some standard Moodle instruments used in MOOC concepts such as: forums, glossary, thematic database, etc. By using this structure, we developed a course to contain all these elements.