Govt hopes for more online varsity courses

PUTRAJAYA: The government hopes to have at least 15% of the courses offered in all public and some privates universities taught online by next year as part of the country's vision to be a developed nation by 2020, said Education Minister II Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh.
This could be done through the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), an online learning portal developed under the Education Ministry's strategic programme, which has already been used in all public universities since Sept 7, he said.
"Some 4,000 students have so far enrolled for the online courses and the number is expected to increase with each semester. We are targeting at least 30% of courses to be taught online by 2020.
"I believe this initiative can improve the country's tertiary education to a much higher level and also boost our public universities' ranking," he said at the pre-launch event for the programme.
He said the programme would transform the current passive lectures to a much more active learning process and assist the democratisation of education, apart from reducing education costs.
He added that with MOOC, higher education becomes more accessible to everyone, including those in the lower income group and will help to build a knowledge-based society.
The programme was developed in collaboration with Australia's Openlearning.com and four local universities. It uses the "flipped classroom" method, where students are able to learn in two-way communication using texts, audio and video.