Sixty Malaysian MOOCs

Sydney based Australian company Open Learning Global Pty., Ltd. has its on-line platform openlearning.com  is being used by the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) to provide Massive Open On-line Courses (MOOCs) from Malaysian universities. There are an initial sixty Malaysian MOOCs provided.

According to a media report, the aim is to have 15% of Malaysian public university courses as on-line MOOCs by the end of this year and 30% by 2020. What is not clear is the aim of this ambitious target: will these MOOCs be accepted by Malaysian universities as the equivalent of face-to-face classes? Who will fund these courses, some of which have tends of thousands of students?

The government aims to teach 15 per cent of all public university courses online as MOOCs by the end of 2015. This will increase to 30 per cent of all university courses by the year 2020.

Read More : http://www.nst.com.my/news/2015/09/60-massive-open-online-courses-public-universities-launched

The government aims to teach 15 per cent of all public university courses online as MOOCs by the end of 2015. This will increase to 30 per cent of all university courses by the year 2020.

Read More : http://www.nst.com.my/news/2015/09/60-massive-open-online-courses-public-universities-launched

The government aims to teach 15 per cent of all public university courses online as MOOCs by the end of 2015. This will increase to 30 per cent of all university courses by the year 2020.

Read More : http://www.nst.com.my/news/2015/09/60-massive-open-online-courses-public-universities-launched

The government aims to teach 15 per cent of all public university courses online as MOOCs by the end of 2015. This will increase to 30 per cent of all university courses by the year 2020.

Read More : http://www.nst.com.my/news/2015/09/60-massive-open-online-courses-public-universities-launched

I had a quick look at one of the courses offered, Introduction to Entrepreneurship from UiTM. The course was easy and quick to enroll in. The home page has an easy to read format, with one menu and a introduction video. "About the Course" provided a brief well structured and written overview. Two appropriate recommended texts are listed, however these are conventional textbooks, not available free on-line. There is an impressive list of instructors for the course.

The course requires 3 hours study per week, over five weeks, 15 hours in total. This is about one eighth of a typical Australian university course: ten hours a week for twelve weeks, 120 hours total. The sixty Malaysian MOOCs would therefore equate to only about eight Australian university courses.

The course website itself responded quickly and did not appear to require large amounts of computer or network resoruces. However, the Padlet wall "Entrepreneurs Padlet Wall" web based service used for student discussions appeared to use considerable amounts of networking.

The course has twelve relatively conventional topics:

1.   Theories and Concepts of Entrepreneurship
2.   Importance of Entrepreneurship
3.   Creativity and Innovation
4.   Entrepreneurial Opportunities
5.   Business Plan
6.   Forms of Business Entity
7.   Business Support System
8.   Marketing Fundamentals
9.   Management of Small Business : Operations Management
10. Management of Small Business : Human Resource Management
11. Financial Management for SMEs
12. Business Ethics, Professional and Social Responsibilities

Video lectures are provided. These are high quality videos, provided via YouTube (an example is "Introduction to Entrepreneurship"). There are no closed captions provided for the videos. Discussion questions are provided for each section. There are quizzes implemented with SWF. Overall this appears to be well designed on-line course.


Some courses of interest:

1. UiTM MOOC, Introduction to Entrepreneurship, 15075 Students
2. UNIMAS-MOOC, ICT Competency, 7999 Students
3. Mohamed Amin Embi, Rethinking Teaching; Redesigning Learning, 453 Students
4. UTM MOOC,WEB BASED MULTIMEDIA DEVELOPMENT, 255 Students
5. UTM MOOC, RESEARCH METHODS IN EDUCATION, 210 Students
6. UTeM MOOC, Critical & Creative Thinking, 145 Students