OXFORD’s academic community is divided by the latest innovation in higher education.

Massive open online courses or MOOCs are heralded as a revolution in teaching.

MOOCs consist of courses or lectures available online and are open, interactive and in many cases free.

Some of the top institutions in America such as Harvard have held online courses with hundreds of thousands of students worldwide.

But while Oxford Brookes University has embraced the idea, Oxford University has been more cautious.

Dr Rhona Sharpe, head of the Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development at Brookes, said the university held a MOOC called “First steps into learning and teaching” last year.

Around 300 people from 24 countries took part and Dr Sharpe said Oxford Brookes is now looking into providing MOOCs in subjects like history or English.

She said: “We recognise they are an exciting opportunity for students in Oxford and beyond.

“They change access to education and democratise higher education.

“We are thinking of MOOCs to give opportunities to try out courses. “People might do a MOOC first and then do an Oxford Brookes degree so they get a taste of what our approach is.

“Our mission is democratising higher education. We want to offer people low cost options and MOOCs are one of them.”

In January the University of Edinburgh began the first MOOCs in the UK in subjects ranging from philosophy to artificial intelligence planning and had 308,000 students from 167 countries.

FutureLearn is the UK’s first MOOC platform. Set up last year by the Open University, it will open its first courses later this year.

But Dr Sally Mapstone, Oxford University’s pro-vice chancellor for education, said: “We think open educational resources have had an important role to play in sharing learning for some time. We don’t see MOOCs as revolutionary in anything other than scale.

“We think the demand for the teaching that Oxford offers through the tutorial system and our wonderful on-site colleges will continue as strongly as ever.”

MOOCS FACTS

Massive open online courses or MOOCs are courses or lectures available online and in many cases free.

This means huge numbers of people from all over the world can take part.
Prestigious universities in America such as Harvard and Princeton have jumped on board and are running their own MOOCs but in the UK academic institutions have been more sluggish.

The first MOOC in the UK was run by the University of Edinburgh on philosophy which attracted 308,000 students from 167 different countries.
Oxford Brookes has run a MOOC called First Steps into Teaching and Learning and is now looking into running courses in more traditional subjects.