Abstract:

Open online courses are growing trend, especially since pandemic, in presenting additional content to students in higher education. As a part of lifelong learning, open online courses and MOOCs provide students with additional topics and information, often the newest one and content specific which they can acquire alongside study programme courses. Attending such courses enable students to get additional information on topics of their interest, to develop digital competences and to be more qualified for the job market. Such courses are open for students free, often self-paced and with certificate and digital-badge after completion. When developed within an international project or as a collaboration between educational institutions such courses can also bring international dimension.
Open online courses and MOOCs are also response to pressing need for implementation of digital technologies into educational process, innovative teaching practices and equal learning opportunities and access to knowledge irrespective of external factors such as geographical location of economic factors. Although teachers aim for implementation of digital technologies in teaching and learning, they often do not have digital competences nor experience in design on such courses. Therefore, the support and training is crucial in this process and should be compulsory in order to design high quality open online courses and MOOCs. Support to teachers to design open online courses and MOOCs to extend students’ learning experience is important part of the process of resetting education for digital age. In this paper, we will present experience and results from the Erasmus+ project Time to Become Digital in Law (DIGinLaw) where aim was to design 12 MOOCs on the topic of law and legal education in higher education. These MOOCs serve as additional resources contributing to inclusive quality legal education. The content of each DIGinLaw MOOCs is aligned with the outcomes for the levels 7 and 8 of the European Quality Framework. Working with teachers with no experience in use of digital technologies in educational process or a basic one, required training and support in all stages of MOOCs development. Used model of supporting and training teachers in MOOC design can be applied to similar context and design of open online courses and MOOCs.

Keywords:

MOOCs, open online courses, support to teachers, digital technologies.