MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES (MOOCs) IN INDIA

ABSTRACT
Technology and globalization have increased ease of access to higher education in India. The
prerequisite of educational system have at all times been the prime aspect of a nation that defines
its academic assets. With the extensive growth and development casing this education sector
would be the most concrete steps towards the attainment of national development. Massive Open
Online Courses (MOOCs) have emerged as a new paradigm of distance education implemented
in India. A MOOCs is so named because of the exceptional large online courses that have been
enrolled students, aimed at open access and unlimited involvement. MOOCs are current online
learning phenomena where it is recognize as a game changer in developing country like India. It
has generated fundamental magnitude in the field of education as it has opened doors for
students to step into territories that were never accessible. In this paper an attempt has made to
bring forth the significance of Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs) in India. In this
connection, different aspects and stratagem have also been discussed in brief. On one hand with
more substantial approach, MOOCs may nurture the educational opportunity in different
education sector over a vast sphere of audience. In this context, India has witnessed an
exponential growth in the field of education.

KEYWORDS: MOOCs, India and online learning.

INTRODUCTION
Massive Open Online Courses (commonly MOOCs) an online course of study has
emerged as an innovative forum in the educational paradigm providing openness in education.
MOOCs act as a model for delivering extensive amount of knowledge to all. MOOCs are now

attracting a massive amount of attention across the world and considerable interests from
different field of education. Besides MOOCs also attained business attentions since the farreaching market in education is unleashing its future opportunity to be exploited.
The 20th century saw tremendous changes in distance education and online, or e-learning
with increasing online existence, open learning opportunities along with the development of
MOOCs. Considering the MOOCs scenario in India, reports expose that the leading hubs for
conducting online learning lie concentrated within the developed countries but developing
countries like India contribute the majority of students going overseas for higher studies.
Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs) aimed at unrestricted involvement and open
access via the web. In addition to conventional course equipment such as readings, filmed
lectures, and problem sets, many MOOCs provide interactive user forums to maintain society
interactions between professors, students, and teaching assistants (TAs). MOOCs are a recent and
widely researched development in distance education which plays a fundamental role in the
educational scenario.
India like any other country highly depends upon the progress and significant production
from the education sector. If MOOCs continue to grow, this huge domain would result in an
extensive development in the education system. India would become a game-changing country in
different aspects of education system.

NEED FOR DEVELOPMENT OF MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES

(MOOCs) IN INDIA
The growth and advancement of technology in the educational sector is wide-ranging
which open new doors for learners, it provides an extensive opportunities as well as challenges in
the field of education. Technology meets the needs of different learning styles and thereby affects

the achievement of students. Thus, students needs knowledge and be aware of alternative
learning.
With the Central Government in India stressing the use of technology to improve
education in its eleventh plan, there is no doubt that technology had a great impact in the country.
The plan clearly states It had been found that students, who often do not perform well in
conventional subjects examinations, demonstrate high success in the use of information
technology (IT) and IT enabled learning. IT could provide new directions in pedagogical
practices and student learning achievement. The idea is not merely making students computer
literate but also initiating web-based learning through modern software facilities. (Eleventh
Five-Year Plan, Social Sector, 2007)
Supportively Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) also aims to ensure
that all students have access to best educational facilities necessary for the all-round
development of the learner. MHRD launches a web portal called Study Webs of Active-Learning
for Young Aspiring Minds (SWAYAM), where Massive Open On-line Courses (MOOCs) will be
available on all kinds of subjects. It aims to made access to university level content for learners
by providing free online courses irrespective of the needs and requirements. (Bharti, 2014)
Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a recent but hugely popular phenomenon
in the online learning world. They are hailed by many as a solution for the developing worlds
lack of access to education because MOOCs can provide learning opportunities to a massive
number of learners from anywhere in the world as long as they can access the course through
Internet. (Liyanagunawardena, Williams & Adams, 2013)
Unfortunately, Massive Open Online Courses initiatives in India are still characterized
with varied limitations. There is a lack of research study concerning to the level of growth and
awareness towards MOOCs among the students. It is very important to examine the attitude of
the students at different levels as it proposes an exceptional mechanism to take high standard
education and place it in the hands of every learner. If MOOCs get officially integrated into our
educational system, they have the potential to facilitate the system and meet the goals of
excellence, equity, excellence, expansion and employability.

EDUCATION IN INDIA- A PERSPECTIVE OF MOOCs

Education in India is a diversified domain and a huge sector. Education is provided by

public sector and private sector where funding and control comes from three levels: central, state
and local. Indias higher education system ranks third in the world after China and United States.
The governing body at the tertiary level is the University Grants Commission (UGC) which is
engaged at advising the government and coordinate enforcing standards between the centre and
state entities. In Indias education system, a significant number of seats are held in reserve for
the historically disadvantaged scheduled tribes, scheduled castes and other backward classes.
There is a minimum of 50% of reservations relevant to these disadvantaged groups.
Distance and open learning in India is the largest of its kind in the world. Indira Gandhi
Open University (IGNOU) is the largest university in the world which co-ordinates distance
learning. It has a growing enrolment of 1.5 million, serviced through different 53 regional centers
along with 1.400 study centers and 25,000 counselors. The Distance Education Council (DEC) is
co-coordinating with 13 states Open Universities and 119 institutions of correspondence courses
in conventional universities. It was established in 1985, designed to impart open and distance
education. While distance education have extended at a very rapid rate, but there is a need of up
gradation with respect to the standards and performance. However the subsequent digital era,
different courses in this Open University have been supported with massive digital study
materials. (Sundharan, 2010)

Focusing the discussion on Massive Open Online Courses, India lacks a concrete
Government system operating to provide innovative online courses. However various private
operated MOOCs providers of Indian origin offer different courses to the learners. When
discussed over a world scenario, an Indian student seems to lag behind with regard to enrollment
for MOOCs when compared to the developed nations. But when compared within the various
developing nations India holds the maximum number of students for MOOCs enrolment. This
highlights the poor set-up of India-based MOOCs in spite of having an enormous prospective
market. A survey report (Fig.1) of courser which is a popular MOOCs provider.

COURSE ENROLLEES
United States
India
Brazil
United Kingdom
Spain
Canada
Australia
Russia
Rest of the world

Fig.1. MOOCs Enrollees

Source: Google trends

MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES (MOOCs) IN INDIA

Learning through Massive, open and online courses (MOOCs) shall enable, in all Indians who
want to learn, earn, teach or innovate, the capability to realize their own true potential and
transform our country FICCI vision (2014)
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are the new revolution far-reaching the
educational scenario. The implementation of MOOCs is a comprehensive path-breaking venture

in the field of education system. The response from Indian students as well as teachers has been
incredible. Globally, Indians are the second largest pool of students after United States attending
MOOCs courses. The MOOCs present a comprehensive high quality education where over 10
million students have enrolled worldwide for thousands of these courses. As predicted by
Deloitte, 2014 students registrations in MOOCs will increased by more than 10 million courses,
a 100% increased over 2012. As most students in India do not received the chance to complete
their tertiary education, it is expected that by 2014 0.2% of all accomplished tertiary education
will offer by MOOCs. By 2020, however, it is expected that over 10% of all the courses taken in
tertiary and venture enduring education may be Massive Open Online Courses (Ralhan, 2014)
Indias first Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs) was launched by United Kingdom
minister for skills and enterprise, Matthew Hancock for professional skills ON 20 th January, 2014
which was hosted by National Skil Dvelopment Corporation (NSDC) .As a part of attaining an
extensive educational initiative, the newly elected Prime Minister of India Narenda Modi
launched an India-focused Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on 2 nd October, 2014. The
platform, likely to be christened Swayam which is expected to offer three varied courses
namely two from IIT Bombay and one from UC Berkeleys Umesh Vazaranis (Dhawal Shah).
Respectively IIT Delhi and BITS Pilani are also offering courses with help of courser to their
respective students. In India, an extensive attempt has been initiated towards the development
and growth of MOOCs; the IITs are proposing to execute a blended MOOCs model which is
based on the mixture of online access using the open-source Edx platform in order to support
face to face mentors at various levels. Dr.Shankar Venkatagiri, Assistance Professor, Quantitative
Methods & Information Systems (QMIS) Area, IIBM, whose Statistics for Business MOOC has
highlights the impact and reach of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) (Indian Institute of
Management, Bangalore, 2014)
In India, when we talk about the popularity of MOOCs, India is the second biggest
market for MOOCs worldwide. It is however predictable that India will soon become the prime
market in the world. Respectively countries like US and China had emerged forward with respect
to enrolment. MOOCs have opened the gateways for a massive number of Indians; it has given
an extensive opportunity in the process of attaining a high standard learning with the help of
internet connectivity. The two foremost reasons as to why Massive Open Online Courses is a

excellent initiative in India is a number of Indians live under poverty line and fail to gain access
or afford higher education as there are more applicants than seats in the Indian Universities.
With the aim of academic democratization and experimentation many educational
institutions are offering several courses free to all which seems to attract thousands of students.
MOOCs are emergent phenomenon in India with significant growth in the year 2014 and 2015.In
this generation of social media and you tube MOOCs are tailored to fit the trending phenomenon
in the education system. It is by now understandable that with the endlessly growing demands of
educational technology several educational institutions have embraced technology in learning.
Today, massive number of students wants to see an extensive use of learning management system
(LMS) and choose more open educational capital and desire for more game based learning and
online videos.

MOOCs- A BUDDING BUSSINESS PROSPECT IN INDIA

In India, the educational segment has been an ultra-utilized business area. With a
multifarious and immensely huge education domain, it offers major business potential to
extensively contribute in the national economy. With the increased enrollment rate for MOOCs,
this clearly portrays the enormous potential in a digitized education.

With the increased popularization of Massive Open Online Courses an extensive digital
infrastructure are implicated in order to cope with the costs of software and hardware
manufactured overseas, the need and requirement for indigenous expansion and manufacturing
of this infrastructure is felt. Implementation of MOOCs would offer this vast marketing sector to
the software and hardware companies in the process of providing the essential digitalized
infrastructure. Similarly it may also open massive scope for research study and development in
Information Technology (IT) and digital education pedagogies. (Chatterjee & Nath, 2014)
Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs) open doors for online digital platform to a great
extent it provides opportunity for promotion which counts significant when extensive domains of

learners are considered as audience. With the initiatives taken by the Government of India, a
private investment would be essential in this highly potential zone of online education. Recently
a number of courses are offered with flexible modes of study which also provide an extensive
potential market to MOOCs since the chief factors to be dealt with is flexibility for the in work
learners on the lookout for higher education. In course of time MOOCs is predictable to be the
smartest probable paradigm for the development of skill among the Indian youths.

PROPOSED VISION FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF MOOCs IN INDIA

Extensive implementation of MOOCs in India would be a path-breaking endeavor in the
prevailing education system. Ensuring digitally knowledgeable teacher- student community
would be a definite pre-requisite for learning and accessing in a MOOCs paradigm. Besides
suitable infrastructure for efficient and effective implementation of MOOCs it includes cheap
digital devices and technologies including high-speed internet connectivity.
Generate an extensive awareness about Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for all
the participants through leadership training, workshops, leadership training, newsletters and
other means of communication, the models and technologies supported by MOOCs at different
levels. Globally, continuous engagement with the respective stake holders customized solution
from various universities in order to develop and design the varied dimension of courses offered
by MOOCs. In general, execution of the mission and vision is an essential duty for the educators,
technologists and administrators who are passionate and expert in the field of online learning,
and MOOCs in particular, must come together to attain a comprehensive goals.
Effective and efficient execution of the vision set out and establishment of a knowledge
base vendor, tools, resources and products in order to attain a regular updates about MOOCs as
well as supporting educational technologies. Creating a partnership with the relevant local and
significant global initiatives such as National Repository of Open Education Resources and
National Knowledge Network on Education using ICT, Solar, edX, Open study and future learn.
Establish an extensive knowledge repository on MOOCs towards sustaining technologies for
education. Respectively run regular MOOCs for promotion and guidance on various aspects of
MOOCs.

CONCLUSION
The education system of India is poorly lacking behind with regard to the inclusion of
pedagogies and recent technology within academic scenario. In this junction, Massive Open
Online Courses emerged as a budding paradigm in the process of attaining a quality in the field
of education at massive online digital platform. In order to make the most out of education
system in India, there is a need to provide awareness on MOOCs not only to raise the method,
quality or quantity of education but also making education accessible to a bigger domain of
people. In the next few years India may face a vast gap between the demand and supply in the
educational scenario.
Again the increasing growth and development in the field of education costs and other
factors would haunt to set up the requisite number of higher education institutes to meet this
extensive demand. MOOCs could be the answer in this facet to bridge this supply-demand gap.
Besides being an substitute paradigm to formal education system in India, MOOCs can also be
regarded as an effective and efficient tool to be engaged for the skill growth and development of
the budding youth in India. The extensive popularization of Massive Open Online Courses in the
next few years will absolutely generate a large pool of educated and skilled youth fit for the job
market. In this context of accomplishment, India holds the potential of attaining quality
education extensively affecting the GDP of the country; it would pave the way of achieving
education for all.

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