Abstract:

With increasing interest and investment in MOOCs by tertiary institutions, educators are expected to market and offer their courses to the global audience. However, rarely do they have all the requisite skills and experience of teaching online, let alone teaching an open course to a potentially massive audience. The challenge of time, effort and skills required for the design, development and facilitation of an online course is often overlooked. However, the loosely defined, participant driven, success thresholds mean MOOCs remain a great avenue for teachers to experiment with online teaching strategies and tactics. Literature alludes to teacher participation in professional development MOOCs as a pathway to build elearning capacity but often at times teachers are unable to fully embrace this opportunity. This paper makes a case for leveraging the authentic experience of designing, developing and facilitating a MOOC itself as an elearning capacity building exercise. A case study from the University of Auckland is used to demonstrate the idea. The paper concludes with a discussion on the relevance and implications of the proposed approach for elearning capacity development.

Keywords:

Online learning, online teaching, academic development, e-learning, MOOCs, higher education