NILAI: A total of 450 Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been offered by public and private universities, polytechnics and community colleges, from only 60 courses, when it was first launched two years ago.
Minister of Higher Education, Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh said, the growth of Malaysia MOOC, the world's first nationally coordinated online learning initiative has been phenomenal with the number of students who have taken Malaysia MOOC courses has also skyrocketed to a total of 600,000 students from more than 170 countries.
"About 25 percent of the total students enrolled in the programme are international students, with 50,000 students from Australia and United States. This is a positive sign, as the ministry continues to increase the quality and accessibility of higher education in the country," he said.
"Malaysia is already at the forefront of e-Learning which is part of the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2015-2025 (Higher Education), in particular Shift 9 -Globalised Online Learning," he said.
Launched in September 2015, Malaysia MOOC offers various courses for free, which are open for enrolment to all students and members of the public at all public and private education institutions in the country.
The courses encompass a wide selection of topics ranging from Business, Engineering, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Healthcare, Languages, Technology and many more.
All courses are available for free on OpenLearning.com, which is the official MOOC platform for all public institutions of higher education in Malaysia.
Courses are delivered primarily in Bahasa Malaysia, English and Arabic, depending on the topic or subject matter.
Idris said, Malaysia has also taken a step further by introducing the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA), a guideline to enable MOOC credit transfer.
"With MQA, students will be able to take their MOOC anywhere in the world, to get a degree and certificate.
"It was launched a year ago, and Malaysia is the first country to create such framework.
These national level initiatives illustrate how we are redesigning higher education for the benefit of our students, country and the global community," he said after launching the International University Carnival On e-Learning 2017 (IUCEL 2017) and the launch of the MyMOOC Development and Delivery Guidelines (GPPPMM) at Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM) here, today.
Also present was USIM vice chancellor Professor Datuk Dr Musa Ahmad.
IUCEL 2017 is the continuity of the National University on e-Learning (NUCEL) held in 2014 and 2015.
This year, 188 innovations and learning innovations products were demonstrated and contested at the event by local and international education institutions involving Augmented Reality programme, MOOC, courseware, Hologram, Web 2.0, Mobile Apps, Portal, Gamification and Holographic among others.