MOOCs are short, free courses run by major learning providers to share their knowledge of a particular academic topic or to help students develop a specific skill. The two free online courses will start in July 2015 and have been developed by the University’s Academic Innovation Hub, supported by the University of Derby Online Learning (UDOL).
Julie Stone, Director of UDOL said: “As an online learning provider we are thrilled to announce our first two MOOCs and we hope they will provide knowledge to a wide range of people.
“As experts in online learning we hope our MOOCs will inspire learners to engage further in their educational opportunities and knowledge acquisition. Our free courses cover subjects that we specialise in making it easy for individuals to progress to their studies with us at undergraduate or postgraduate level.”
All MOOCs will be delivered through Canvas Network, the second largest provider of free online courses in the world. Canvas Network specialise in delivering MOOCs to learners all over the world, helping to break barriers to learning, efficiently, safely and responsibly.
Munib Hadi, Head of the Innovation Hub at the University of Derby added: “One of the primary reasons we undertook the MOOCs project was to bring down the barriers to higher education and give a flavour of the high quality teaching on offer at UDOL. As part of our open education strategy, our courses have no prerequisite requirements.
“Even though they are free courses, University of Derby MOOCs have a gone through a similar quality review process as our paid for courses. This ensures our MOOC learners get a quality learning experience.”
Since 2001, the University of Derby has offered online distance learning to students who required more flexible study options. As demand for these popular online distance learning courses increased, Derby learned to tailor course content specifically for online delivery and in 2011, UDOL was launched. UDOL is now one of the UK’s leading providers of online learning.
UDOL has experienced significant success by combining the best quality university teaching and the latest online delivery techniques, and its future plans are ambitious as it continues to expand and grow to meet the rising demand for quality online degree courses.
The two free online courses will start in July 2015 and enrolment opens on June 10 2015.