Success factors for an African MOOC

About MOOCs
The term MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses) was coined in 2008 by Dave Cormier and Bryan Alexander. A 12-week online course was offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes where 25 students took the course for credit and 2,300 other students participated without receiving credit. The first ‘massive’ MOOCs were held from late 2011 by the big three Edx, Cousera and Udacity in collaboration with leading universities in the USA. These MOOCs attracted enrollments of 100,000 or more per course.
The online oxford dictionary defines a MOOC as “a course of study made available over the Internet without charge to a very large number of people”. MOOCs are made up of traditional course materials such as videos, readings, quizzes and exercises. MOOCs also provide collaborative user forums that help build communities for students, facilitators and professors.


Success ingredients for an African MOOC

1. The agenda must go beyond the hype about MOOCs – in a few years something else might have taken the place of MOOCs. The agenda must be to gain experience and lessons in establishing quality technology supported courses and programs for African students and other stakeholders.
2. When I enrolled for the MOOC on MOOC course conducted by COL and partners, I experienced power and internet outages during the course. The pdf files associated with each video were very useful for keeping me connected to the course. We need to consider the environment in which African Universities and potential learners exist in. An African MOOC needs to take into consideration infrastructural challenges and provide for alternative avenues for accessing the learning materials.
3. Putting a course online does not guarantee its quality! Attention needs to be paid to quality assuring an African MOOC
4. The MOOC Pedagogy is challenged by massive numbers of students. A platform that effectively engages facilitators and learners will be very important.
5. MOOCs cannot replace African Higher Education Institutions – but could be integrated into university programs. Leading MOOC experts consider MOOCs as equivalent to public lectures and others view MOOCs as textbooks. An African MOOC could support a blended learning strategy.

Conclusion
MOOCs are good because they could potentially facilitate open access to quality knowledge for the benefit of those at the bottom of the pyramid. Sir Daniel, the past CEO of the Commonwealth of Learning refers to “quality without exclusivity”. He says that “Open education broke open the iron triangle of access, cost and quality that had constrained education throughout history and had created the insidious assumption, still prevalent today, that in education you cannot have quality without exclusivity”.

Eight tips for implementing e-learning

Advice to a Vice Chancellor starting to implement e-learning
Implementing e-learning in a university needs to be well planned and fully supported by the Chief Executive Officer of the university. Below are some tips for planning the implementation:

1. Begin by reflecting on your university's vision for e-learning: This is important for developing buy in and ownership at all levels of the university. It will also help to create an understanding on the type of e-learning - fully online, blended, self study,  or other. This stage is also about change management.
2. Carry out an e-learning readiness review: This is some kind of SWOT analysis. A critical review of ICT infrastructure, staff skills, student skills, attitudes, etc will be part of this.
3. Develop an e-learning strategy and e-learning policy: This will help the university to articulate the road map for e-learning and explain "why e-learning". An e-learning strategy will support resource mobilization for e-learning and force the university to prioritize a budget for e-learning. The e-learning policy will address issues such as the incentives for faculty staff.
4. Draw up an e-learning implementation plan: This is the "how to, when, how much and who document". It is a commitment to operationalizing the e-learning strategy.
5. Identify e-learning champions that will preach the gospel. Since e-learning would be new - there is a need to use the converted to preach to the unconverted.
6. Plan and implement an e-learning awareness campaign to de-mysify e-learning and provide information on the e-learning strategy.
7. Learn from those universities that have succeeded with e-learning implementation: It is very important to organize learning visits to universities that have implemented e-learning. This will help the university not to reinvent the wheel.
8. Commit to a review and monitoring strategy: Learning and feeding back lessons to improve e-learning is very important for the maturity of e-learning in the university.

This advice is based on my personal experiences working in an African Higher Institution of Education. Your feedback is most welcome.