The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) Joins Global Alliance of MOOCs for Online Education

The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) became the first Mexican higher education institution to enter the global alliance of massive online courses MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses), founded by institutions from China and the United States, but which has already It brings together organizations from 14 countries.

MOOC courses are an online learning modality, which is booming worldwide, aimed at an unlimited number of participants through the Internet, according to the principle of open and massive education.

More than 800 universities around the world offer thousands of free online courses. Some consider them an evolution of open education on the internet. The term was coined in 2008 by Dave Cormier and Bryan Alexander.

The UNAM joins the aforementioned alliance with an offer of 115 online courses, in Spanish, whose quality and effectiveness has already been proven through the Coursera platform, reported this Friday the head of the Open University Coordination, Educational Innovation and Distance Education (CUAIEED) from UNAM, Melchor Sánchez Mendiola.

The approach to the organization was carried out through Francisco José Trigo Tavera, head of the Coordination of International Relations and Affairs of the UNAM; and Adalberto Noyola Robles, director of the UNAM-China Center for Mexican Studies, Sánchez Mendiola recalled.

We explore new options, since until now we have worked with the Coursera platform, the largest in the Western world. But the proposal arose that UNAM join this Global Alliance of MOOCs and Online Education. With this entry, the National University becomes the first Mexican university to belong to this select group, he emphasized.

The Alliance seeks to serve as an international platform of world-leading institutions in the topics of massive online courses, in order to build a diverse community of universities and organizations to help each other and implement online education in the world, he insisted.

PATH WALKED

The educational trend that has been called MOOC has been considered a disruptive innovation by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen. These courses are considered to be a starting point for dissemination, bringing university education closer to the digital transformation of the economy and a way to open a window of opportunity to the world.

Some of the most important characteristics of MOOC courses are: 1) mass access by students from all over the world interested in a specific topic; 2) free, open and easy access, without requiring passing any prior knowledge test or being a student of the institution that offers the MOOC; 3) free access, since you do not need to pay to access the contents and the course platform, although access to tutorials, evaluations, bibliographic resources or accreditations may have a cost, 4) its structure is designed to promote autonomous learning. It uses resources such as videos, links, documents and spaces for debate and communication and 5) it is developed completely online and allows you to use the potential of the Internet with tools such as audio, text, video or animation, easily, quickly and from anywhere.

UNAM currently has 115 courses with MOOC formats developed at the University, which are free for the university community and easy to access. Videos and trainings can be downloaded anywhere in the world, and a fee is only charged if formal proof is required.

Sánchez Mendiola pointed out that currently “we have five million 400 thousand people from all over the world registered in our MOOCs, and from UNAM personnel we have more than 52 thousand registered teachers and students.”

In Latin America, UNAM is the higher education institution that has the most students registered on that platform. “Their enormous advantage is that they can be taken at the individual’s own pace, according to their time availability,” he noted.

Thanks to the entry of the National University into the Alliance, representatives of CUAIEED will participate this year in the Global MOOC and Online Education Conference that will take place in Milan, Italy, where the topic “Reconstruction of universities and education” will be addressed. of the future driven by artificial intelligence.”

The members of the MOOC alliance offer courses in 10 languages

The Global MOOC Alliance is a conglomerate made up of 17 universities and three distance education platforms, from 14 countries, where 10 languages ​​are spoken, led by Tsinghua University of China; Cornell University in New York; the edX organization at Harvard University; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Rice University, all in the United States. In addition, the Mongolian University of Science and Technology participates; the Nanyang Technological Institute and the Beijing Technological Institute; in addition to other institutions from Germany, Canada, Chile, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Russia and New Zealand, among other countries.