Survey on Understanding the Implications of MOOCs in Engineering Education

The trend of Education is changing day by day. In the trend of Traditional way of education, distance learning came into existence in the form of Correspondence courses in the 1890s-1920s, later radio and television broadcast of courses and early forms of e-learning. At present digital age of learning is the happening with the increase in online and distance education through open learning opportunities and the development of MOOCs. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are one of the most prominent trends in higher education in recent years. With time and place flexibility, MOOCs gathers scholars and 'like-minded fellow learners around the globe'. Many of the reflections about MOOCS are based on economic perspectives (scalability, productivity, being "free") and technology perspectives (such as forums, peer-to-peer learning support, automatic grading). The massive and open nature of MOOCs places the control of learning at the discretion of the learner. Therefore, it is essential to understand learner behavior. This paper examines and explores the learners' behavior relevant to MOOCs and subjective considerations inherent in learning. A number of psychological challenges specific to the development and use of MOOCs such as the motivational, emotional and intellectual commitment of MOOC learners, and the skills profile that effective MOOC learners require are discussed. Therefore, a literature review on MOOCs characteristics, timeline of its development and a blend of practical issues with the experiences of faculty on MOOCs education are presented. Two interesting questions to ask based on these developments are: (1) knowledge of MOOCs and (2) who is attending MOOCs currently. This paper represents an effort (1) to create the understanding of MOOCs from the prospective of students and faculty, and (2) to articulate the pros and cons with MOOCs.