Abstract:

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for teachers’ professional development (TPD) are being considered as a new avenue through which huge number of teachers can be given professional inputs and skills enhancement training with lesser efforts and in an economical way. In a country like India, where nearly 1.5 million teachers are engaged in teaching-learning in higher education institutions and universities, no formal mechanism can fulfil the professional development need. Government of India, started TPD programmes through its vertical ARPIT on its MOOC platform SWAYAM in 2018. In past two cycles, nearly 0.2 million teachers have got benefitted with it. To ensure the quality of such TPD programme, analysis and assessment of various TDP programmes is essential. Keeping this need in mind, the researcher has conducted the study and collected perception of 101 higher education teachers who have completed at-least one TPD programme on MOOC on six quality dimensions. The findings are suggesting that many aspects of quality are still missing from many MOOCs being offered for professional development of teachers. Teachers are showing their readiness to consider MOOCs as a mode for their professional development, it is responsibility of the MOOC providers (institutions and course instructors) to ensure the quality of MOOC by considering various dimensions of quality.

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