Criteria for Quality Assurance to Develop MOOC Courses on Climate Change

Proceedings of The 4th International Academic Conference on Education

Year: 2021

DOI:

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Criteria for Quality Assurance to Develop MOOC Courses on Climate Change

Abdolrasoul Habibipour, Ashok Tripathi, Andrei Rybin, Olga Timokhina,Kanshukan Rajaratnam, Oksana Bugaenko, Ekaterina Shiman, Jari Porras, Karl Andersson, Anna Ståhlbröst, Serestina Viriri, Mandlenkosi Gwetu

 

ABSTRACT: 

This article is focused on identifying criteria for quality assurance to develop Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), with a particular emphasis on developing MOOC on the usage of disruptive information technologies (DITs)  as tools to work on climate change mitigation efforts. The research has been done within the context of Living Laboratory in Climate Change (LiLaCC) project, which is an Erasmus+ CapacityBuilding project in the field of Higher Education, with its six university partners in Europe and Africa. In so doing, a literature review on understanding criteria for quality assurance for MOOCs has been conducted. The literature reviews then formed the basis to develop empirical data collection tool, i.e., open-ended questionnaire. The six university partners then reflected on the identified criteria and also identified several other aspects that needs to be taken into account, when it comes to develop MOOCs, with a particular focus on climate change issues. Accordingly, eight overarching themes for quality assurance were identified, namely 1) organization of the lecture, 2) teaching quality, 3) methodology, 4) technical aspects, 5) motivation and culture, 6) delivery of MOOCs, 7) assessment, and 8) dissemination and promotion of MOOCs. Each of the themes includes several factors for quality assurance that can be used by both university researchers as well as practitioners in the field. The article provides a regulatory framework for matters related to teaching, learning, supervision and admissions to the MOOC in climate change.

keywords: Climate change, Education, MOOC, Quality assurance, Quality manual.