Making moocs on a budget/ Course outline/Making MOOCs on a budget



This website contains the outputs of the Locomotion project, funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union, and carried out by the moocs4all team

Much of the excitement surrounding the potential of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) has been due to the explosive rise in the number of people with access to the internet - 3.2 billion registered internet users in 2015, compared to just 400 million in 2000 (International Telecommunications Union, 2015).

Increased access to the internet means increased access to MOOCs, and in this context, MOOCs have been heralded by many as having the potential to revolutionize technology-enhanced learning – scaling up access to affordable educational opportunities for everyone on the planet.

The cost of actually producing MOOCs was identified by the moocs4all team as a barrier which would prevent the majority of educational institutions from participating in the expansion of education through the MOOC medium. While many MOOCs are available free of charge to participants, they cannot be produced for free. In 2013, the most widely promoted MOOCs were reported to cost anywhere from USD 45,000 to USD 200,000 to develop (Peterson, 2013) – beyond the budgets of most institutions.

On this website, you can access a 7-module MOOC which will guide you through the process of making a MOOC using low-cost methodologies. You can also view other resources developed by the moocs4all team, including:
 * A series of webinars presented by global experts on topical MOOC-related issues,
 * A set of guidelines for low-cost methodologies for developing MOOCs,
 * Samples of other MOOCs developed using low-cost methodologies
 * Presentations made by the Locomotion team on low-cost MOOC development.

You may also access discussion forums which will remain open as a community of practice for the future, where anyone interested in making low-cost MOOCs may find support from peers who are doing the MOOC or others who are just interested in the area.