David Pundak

Accreditation of MOOCs

Abstract Higher education institutions face conflicting challenges; they must equip students with up-to-date knowledge in fields in which knowledge is constantly being renewed, while they also need to guide students to examine reality through broad-based observation and consider different scientific disciplines. They operate within different constrictions such as: learning program boundaries, budgetary constrictions, and lack of accessibility to experts in different areas, and the range of courses offered to students is limited. To cope with these constrictions, Ort Braude Academic College of Engineering opened an experimental program. As part of this program, students were allowed to study MOOC courses under the college’s supervision, and were eligible for accreditation if they completed the courses successfully. Only 15 out of the 600 students offered the program, registered for these courses. Only seven were accepted for the program. This paper describes the background for the college’s decision, the registration process and supervision of students, detailing students’ challenges and achievements in the MOOC courses. Students who completed the MOOC courses reported that they enjoyed meaningful learning, requiring serious efforts in comparison to the courses that the MOOC courses replaced. Given this positive feedback by the students, it was decided to continue with the experiment.

ENGINEERING COLLEGE LECTURERS RELUCTANCE TO ADOPT ONLINE COURSES

Abstract The paper investigates difficulties involved in integrating online courses in academic colleges. Despite their growing prevalence in Israel and worldwide there are still no online courses offered as part of the learning process in many colleges. In order to identify factors for this phenomenon, a study was conducted to investigate the attitudes of 137 lecturers in an academic college concerning online courses. A questionnaire was employed to examine attitudes in four areas: cognizance of the online courses, willingness to teach these courses, influence of online courses on the college’s reputation and teaching methods in online courses. The study identified four sources of reluctance among college instructors to teach in these courses: lack of knowledge concerning teaching methods, fear of a heavy work burden, concern that students’ achievements might fall and impairment of the college’s reputation. Since there is desire to integrate online courses in academic colleges, it is recommended that an online pedagogy support centre should be opened in these colleges, and that colleges should consider making it mandatory for students to take at least one compulsory online course during their degree course.

Integrating Online Assignments Checking in Introductory Courses

Web technology offers lecturers the option of checking students’ assignments online. Several sys-tems have evolved to deliver personal assignments to each student in a multi-participant course. These systems provide students with immediate feedback, allowing them to correct erroneous answers and referring them to relevant literary sources that can assist them with their assign-ments. These strategies influence the lecturers’ teaching and their ability to respond to students’ difficulties in real-time. The study examines student attitudes concerning the integration of the WebAssign (WA) Online Assignment Checker (OAC) in the teaching of academic courses. An on-line questionnaire investigated attitudes of 75 engineering students studying introductory aca-demic courses assisted by OAC. The questionnaire included the following six dimensions: in-volvement and interest, understanding the studied material, lecturers’ consideration of students’ difficulties, importance of the course, tutorial methods and dishonest assignment submission. Significant findings emerged for attitudes in three dimensions. The students think that OAC assist lecturers to relate to their difficulties, contribute to their success in the course, and do not encour-age cheating such as copying. No preference was found between submitting homework in hard-copy or online.