Effectiveness of integrating open educational resources and massive open online courses in student centred learning

Abstract

Open Educational Resources (OER) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS) are successful areas intended at giving students equal access to educational resources and innovative educational opportunities. They facilitate to adapt Student Centred Learning (SCL) in teaching, learning and assessment from many aspects. SCL activities enable the acquisition of new skills by the learners. The great varieties of OER, allows the possibility of differentiated instruction to cater the learner’s individual capabilities thereby helping them to depend on themselves. The assessment of the learner is shaped differently with the integration of the resources of OER & MOOCS. This study explores the integration of OER & MOOCS in SCL at Department of Information Technology (IT), Higher College of Technology (HCT), Muscat. The SCL approach is implemented in each course at different level of study through different strategies. In this paper, we present the implementation of SCL in two courses: Introduction to Database and Data Modelling. The first course is offered to Diploma - Year 1 students and the second course is offered to students in Advanced Diploma level. Different surveys were conducted to analyze the effectiveness and it is found that the integration of OER and MOOCS affected positively in the student-learning process.