MOOCs: Introducing Flexibility in Academia

The number of high level MOOCs produced by top universities can contribute to an increasing flexibility in academia but we seem somewhat hesitant in offering them to our students. When Wageningen university decided to integrate its own MOOCs in the electives for the campus students, we discovered that most obstacles were caused by academic beliefs and systems, anchored in our face to face education. Our policy to treat the MOOCs as a normal course with the parameters of the study guide and by organizing an on campus examination, most problems were solved. For the next step, the exchange of MOOCs between HEI’s, we predict that our administrative and quality assurance systems will be the limiting factor to exploit the scalability of the MOOCs.