Introducing MOOCs to Africa: New Economy Skills for Africa Program - ICT

Abstract

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are highly interactive online courses open to all on the World Wide Web. Some use OER and others rely on commercial content that can include video, multimedia and computer applications as well as text and graphics. MOOCs have the potential to enhance online education in developing countries by facilitating collaboration between people, places and technology. In fact, Coursera, the prominent American MOOC platform provider, has recently partnered with the World Bank and the Tanzanian government to provide MOOCs to African students in an ICT education initiative. In this paper, the Tanzanian pilot project is investigated as a lens through which to examine the strengths and weaknesses of MOOCs in the developing world.