MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM

Assignment - Proposal Definition and Feasibility Assessment Report to start an online

course (MOOCs) in engineering and management teaching institutions.

PROPOSAL DEFINITION:
A Massive Open Online Course is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open
access via the web. In addition to traditional course materials, such as filmed lectures, readings,
and problem sets, many MOOCs provide interactive courses with user forums or social media
discussions to support community interactions among students, professors, and teaching
assistants, as well as immediate feedback to quick quizzes and assignments. MOOCs are a recent
and widely researched development in distance education, first introduced in 2008 and emerged
as a popular mode of learning in 2012. Early MOOCs often emphasized open-access features,
such as open licensing of content, structure and learning goals, to promote the reuse and
remixing of resources. Some later MOOCs use closed licenses for their course materials while
maintaining free access for students.

FEASIBILITY:
Offers a flexible learning schedule:
Certain lectures, videos, and tests through MOOCs can be accessed at any time compared to
scheduled class times. By allowing learners to complete their coursework in their own time, this
provides flexibility to learners based on their own personal schedules.
Online collaboration:
The learning environments of MOOCs make it easier for learners across the globe to work
together on common goals. Instead of having to physically meet one another, online
collaboration creates partnerships among learners. While time zones may have an effect on the
hours that learners communicate, projects, assignments, and more can be completed to
incorporate the skills and resources that different learners offer no matter where they are located.
Expert Lectures
Students can also get access to professors of different institutions. Institutions can form
collaboration with foreign professors and ask them to give lectures on some specific topic. This
will help students to learn something new related to their course and which will help them in
developing their knowledge base. MOOCs also makes possible to connect to professors who
lives in different country, different continent.
Internet Connection
For MOOC internet connection is mandatory, without internet one cannot access to it. Low
connectivity will hinder the online classes, audio may not be audible or some other hindrances,
problems in video or content sharing, and is also prone to hacking. If any student has no or poor
internet connection, then access to classes will be very difficult for them.
Student Interaction
Student interaction is very important for any classroom education, whether traditional or online.
In MOOC, students may open the class and do some other work, and there will be no way to
know whether student is attending the lecture or not. Student participation depends on their
motivation and likeness for the subject. Teachers use some methods to keep check of this but
they are not very effective. Thus teachers try to make classes effective and interactive so that
students also show participation, but this increases the burden for teachers and makes teaching
more difficult than the traditional classroom.

In brief, introducing MOOC in engineering and management institutions opens gates to new way
of learning which can be effective, but also brings various challenges for the lecturers. It is
beneficial for students who are unable to attend colleges for various reasons.