Abstract:

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) constitute the latest trend in education, providing new opportunities for open and distance education. MOOCs evolution is underway and they are considered as the mean to expand Higher Education Institutes’ (HEIs) technology enhanced learning, in order to develop online courses based on community interactions between students, professors and teaching assistants and to promote the reuse and remixing of educational resources. From 2008, when the first course emerged, until today MOOCs are the center of attention for the researchers who aim to identify new methods of knowledge dissemination. Once MOOCs illuminate a new educational path, depth investigations are needed, about how an open educational institution may determine which MOOC platform is appropriate for serving its learning strategy. The main objective of this paper is to describe a comparative evaluation methodology for MOOC platforms. Particularly, a detailed description of Hellenic Open University’s (HOU) applied methodology is presented, taking into consideration the concept of openness and the license policy, which may vary in open learning. HOU pioneers new educational methods which are based on the principles of distance education. As a result, it is considering MOOCs as part of its policy and aims to develop high quality MOOCs. In the conclusion of the paper, the evaluation results and outcomes by the scope of HOU are discussed, aiming to facilitate open universities, which follow the same principles as HOU, in the decision of choosing the appropriate MOOC platform for them.

Keywords:

MOOCs, MOOC platforms, open universities, e-learning.