This document discusses Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). It begins with providing background on MOOCs, noting that they aim for unlimited participation through open access online and are free with unlimited enrollment. It describes key characteristics of MOOCs like large scale, no formal entry requirements, learner-centered approach, and high dropout rates. A brief history of MOOCs is then given, from early open education movements to the first MOOCs on platforms like Coursera and Udacity in 2012.

1. MOOCs

2. Profile
 Name: Bongumusa
 Surname: Madosnela
 Student no: 201312877
 I am a third year student doing my first Bachelor of Education
Degree (Bed). I am majoring in English (Literature) and Physical
Education
 Language proficiency: IsiZulu, Sesotho & English

4. What are MOOCs?
 Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a
fresh innovation in educational development.
They have attracted great interest in the higher
education community.
 MOOCs are aimed at unlimited participation
and open access via the web
 Not only are they free, they offer essentially
unlimited enrollment to anyone interested.
Based on Stephen Downes’ connectivist theory,
MOOCs feature three aspects: open content,
open instruction, and open assessment

5. Characteristics of MOOCs
 Scale of numbers – no participation limit
 No formal entry requirement
 Virtual Learning Environment is not the centre of the course
 Use a variety of (new) social media and online tools
 Learner-centred
 Increased student participation and self-direction
 Facilitators create the environment not way of learning
 Scattered chaos
 High drop out rate
 Can be Community of Practice

6. Brief History of MOOCs
 Open Education Movement
– Open content, open knowledge, open content
 Connectivism
– learning is successful if we connect and build relevant networks
 CCK08
– Connectivism and Connective Knowledge Course run in 2008
 Standford MOOCs (2012)
– Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Databases
 Platforms
– Coursera
– Udacit

8. My Field of Study
 My field of study is English and what interests me the most in the English
language is Literature and Grammar.
 I am mostly interested in British Literature as I believe it gives insight to
its readers as far as humans and human life in general is concerned.
 The British literature is remarkable in its use of language which make
one not to see things on a surface level but requires them to look for a
deeper meaning that one can find as they read.
 Not only that, the other reason I am interested in English literature is that
it creates critical thinkers and reflective individuals who are cautious
and thoughtful of the things they do and/or say.

9. English literature
is the literature which is
distinctly written in the English
language, as opposed to
differing languages. English
literature includes literature
composed in English by
writers not necessarily from
England nor primarily English-

10. Until the early 19th century, this
article deals with literature from
Britain written in English; then
America starts to produce major
writers and works in literature. In
the 20th century America and
Ireland produced many of the
most significant works of literature
in English, and after World War II
writers from the former British
Empire also began to challenge
writers from Britain.

11. The value of literature
 It is a curious and prevalent opinion that literature, like all art, is a mere play of
imagination, pleasing enough, like a new novel, but without any serious or
practical importance. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Literature preserves
the ideals of a people; and ideals--love, faith, duty, friendship, freedom,
reverence--are the part of human life most worthy of preservation.
 The Greeks were a marvelous people; yet of all their mighty works we cherish only
a few ideals,--ideals of beauty in perishable stone, and ideals of truth in
imperishable prose and poetry. It was simply the ideals of the Greeks and Hebrews
and Romans, preserved in their literature, which made them what they were, and
which determined their value to future generations. Our democracy, the boast of
all English-speaking nations, is a dream; not the doubtful and sometimes
disheartening spectacle presented in our legislative halls, but the lovely and
immortal ideal of a free and equal manhood, preserved as a most precious
heritage in every great literature from the Greeks to the Anglo-Saxons.
 All our arts, our sciences, even our inventions are founded squarely upon ideals;
for under every invention is still the dream of Beowulf, that man may overcome
the forces of nature; and the foundation of all our sciences and discoveries is the
immortal dream that men "shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."

12. The value of literature cont.
 In a word, our whole civilization, our freedom, our progress, our
homes, our religion, rest solidly upon ideals for their foundation.
Nothing but an ideal ever endures upon earth. It is therefore
impossible to overestimate the practical importance of literature,
which preserves these ideals from fathers to sons, while men, cities,
governments, civilizations, vanish from the face of the earth.
 It is only when we remember this that we appreciate the action of
the devout Mussulman, who picks up and carefully preserves every
scrap of paper on which words are written, because the scrap may
perchance contain the name of Allah, and the ideal is too
enormously important to be neglected or lost.