| Abstract: | Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been around only for less
than a decade. In 2011 a pilot course - Introduction to Artificial Intelligence -
by Sebastian Thrun and his colleagues at Stanford University gained an
incredible success of attracting over 160,000 participants from all over the
world. This marked the beginning of a new chapter in the development of
higher education - soon a number of MOOC offering initiatives were
launched and the popularity of the concept grew wildly. In the consequent
years, dozens of top universities of the World opened up for MOOCs and
millions of people from all walks of life and all over the world enrolled in
the sharply increasing courses offered on such platforms. MOOCs gained
coverage by both higher-education-concerned and general media outlets,
and soon became a subject of heated debate.
While the subject remains under-researched, MOOCs are largely regarded
as 'revolutionizing' the way higher education is perceived and conducted.
They have offered the promise that higher education can be accessed by
anyone, anywhere, regardless of their socio economic backgrounds or their
previous academic and work experiences. They also have epitomized the
peer learning approach in higher education where a professor, perhaps
along with few colleagues, can offer a course for hundreds of thousands of
participants at a time, who mainly learn through cooperating with each
other.
There are both advocates and critics of MOOCs as to their contribution to
the development of higher education. Often, however, the debate on the
pros and cons of MOOCs is framed in general terms referring to the benefits
and challenges embedded within their attributes. This paper tries to explore the potential implications of this new phenomenon for the African higher
education. Considering the multitude of challenges and the pertinent
limitation of capacity, the paper suggests what African higher education
institutions can do to make the best use of this emerging dynamics. |
