Status, e-assessment and open source resources for MOOCs development discussed in workshop

Chandigarh, November 9, 2019: The day six of the workshop was devoted to the status of MOOCs, e-assessment, Open source resources for MOOCs. The seven day workshop on Designing and development of MOOCs is being organised by the Centre of Academic Leadership and Education Management (CALEM) and Swayam Cell, Panjab University, Chandigarh. Prof.Jatinder Grover, CALEM Coordinator, PU, and Dr.Vishal Sharma, SWAYAM Coordinator PU introduced the theme and topics to the participants attending seven days workshop on designing and development of MOOCs. The first academic session was devoted to the Status of MOOCs through the perspective of Statistics by Prof. Ravi K. Mahajan from Department of Statistics, USOL, P.U. Prof. Mahajan took the participants on the journey of various MOOC platforms available and the courses offered by them. The characteristics of the SLM (Self Learning Mode) and SIM (Self Instructional Mode) were shared with the participants. He stressed on the quality of the educational content and transferring that into e-content (script/ video production/ audio content/animations). He also stressed on the quality multimedia presentations using visual and graphical presentations for engaging the learners undertaking MOOCs. He also gave the historical background of video productions/e-content for UGC Countrywide classroom, undertaken by USOL in the past. The second academic session was devoted to the E-assessment of MOOCs by Prof. Uma Kanjilal from IGNOU. She explained in detail the concept of xMOOC (traditional, Linear and having centralized repository) and cMOOC (Non-linear and social networked learning). Besides, that various component of MOOCs and intricacies of E-assessment of MOOCs were also discussed. The recognition of credits marks earned through MOOCs was discussed. She also explained the modalities of transfer of credits across universities for the MOOCs. Dr. Amit Deogar from NITTTR, Chandigarh discussed the various Open source resources (OER) for MOOCs Development. The enlightened the participants the freedom of using open source softwares and website distrowatch.com for downloading many Open source softwares. He also shared if we start using the Open source softwares we can save crores of rupees and will help our economy. He also highlighted the importance of BOSS (the operating system) developed by the CDAC. He shared the problem of Software Piracy and concept of a Common Creative License.