A Study Of Instructional Mode Of MOOCs In American Universities

Massachusetts Institute of Technology is the first university to open its own teaching resources in 2001.It attracts many colleges and universities imitate this behavior to open their educational resources and lead to a global open course war.With the further development of the OCW,the expansion of educational needs and the updating of educational technology,a new online course which open to massive learners appeared.It is MOOCs.Now MOOCs has come on strong over the worldwide and try change the traditional teaching mode.American unversities have became the leader in production dissemination and development of MOOCs.The three biggest educational platform—Coursera?Udacity?edX is the best example of that.American colleges and universities in the development of MOOCs gradually formed a stable teaching mode.This teaching mode is significative for promoting MOOCs around the world.We are still in the initial stage in the development and application of MOOCs.It is useful to promote our universities launch MOOCs,change our current dilemma and build world-class universities by analyzing and studying the teaching model of MOOCs in American colleges and universities.There are four research techniques in this paper.It combines literature research,historical research,case analysis and comparative research.This paper will discourse the background and history of MOOCs carefully,then analyses and research the teaching process and instructional mode of MOOCs in Coursera and edX which exploited by the institutions of Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Based on these research materials to analyses and summarize the characteristics,problems and coping strategies of MOOCs' teaching model in American colleges and universities.The researching results can be used to provide references and helps for the development of MOOCs in our colleges and universities.In addition to the introduction,this study is divided into five parts:Introduction:In this part I will describe this research from five aspects carefully.It conclude that the reasons why I choose this article,the purpose and meaning for the subject,the researching situations in domestic and foreign countries currently,the definition of the keywords,the main idea and researching methods.The first part is the introduction which introduces the development of MOOCs in American colleges and universities.I will analyze the causes and processes of MOOCs in American colleges and universities from two aspects:the background and the development process.The second part is an analysis of MOOCs instructional mode in American universities.In this part I will select six typical MOOCs which provided by Stanford university in Coursera and the same amount of MOOCs in the edX platform by MIT.I will research and analyze these courses from the teaching philosophy,instructional objectives,teaching procedures,evaluation and implementation conditions.Thirdly,the characteristics of MOOCs' instructional mode in American Universities.This paper summarize the characteristics of the MOOCs' instructional mode in American universities by analyzing the teaching mode which used in MOOCs of Sanford university and MIT.The advantages are the integration of Platform,curriculum,courseware,the diversely usage of evaluation methods,the combination of online and offline communication.The fourth part is about the problems and solution of MOOCs' instructional mode which used by American universities.The problems is the lower completion rate,the participation rate and the teaching qualities.The useful measures to solve these problems are to provide extra services for learners,to develop different kinds of courses which based on their purpose,to stimulate learners' intrinsic motivation.The fifth tells about enlightenments from the instructional Mode of MOOCs in American Universities to our Universities.In this part,I will introduce the development and instructional mode of MOOCs in our universities,and then puts forward the enlightenment.We should establish a concept of opening-up and innovation for developing our own MOOCs;Set up a clear teaching objectives of MOOCs;Combine the theory and practice;develop the multi-angle teaching evaluation system;Provide more beneficial conditions for the development of MOOCs in our universities.