Professional Development, Teachers Training, In-service Teacher Education, Teaching in Higher Education, MOOC, Strategies of Professional Development, Innovation in Faculty Development, Teaching at Tertiary Level, Innovations through MOOC, Flexible blended Training for Teachers, MOOCx for Teachers, Human Resource Management and Training, Teachers for a better classroom, Course Era, edX, Udacity, Online Training, Clinics for Teachers, Higher Education and Experiments, Future of Indian Teacher Training, Cost Effectiveness in Teachers' Professional Development, Ideal Inservice teacher education, NCTE and future possibilities.

1. Sameer Babu M, Ph. D.
THE EFFICACY OF MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSE
PLATFORMS FOR PROGRESSIVE PROFESSIONAL
DEVELOPMENT OF TEACHERS AT TERTIARY LEVEL:
THE CONTEXT AND PROSPECTS

2. Let’s Begin
 The effectiveness of institutional reform initiatives
depends on the quality of teachers and on
teachers' motivation to participate in training and
implement innovations (Gorozidis &
Papaioannou, 2014).
 This has a connotation in teachers professional
development, for sure.

3. Concerns
 The existing practices of blending technology for
professional development of teachers
 The efficiency of Massive Open Online Courses
(MOOCs) in the effective delivery of course for
professional development of teachers
 The status of and survey of the providers of
MOOCs on various themes addressing teachers’
professional apprehensions, and
 The future of the MOOCs in facilitating the
teaching community to grow professionally.

4. What it is! Professional
Development
 Professional Development can be defined as any
purposive activity with effective and pre-
determined methodology in a reflective
atmosphere with an objective of further
improvements in teaching learning and
evaluation. [Babu M, Sameer, 2016]

5. Components
Professional
Development:
Concerns
Content
Knowledge
Differnetial
Patterns of
Engagements
Evaluation
Modes and
Modules
Management-
Class as well as
Behaviour
Preparing for a
new Apporach
Situation
Creation
variety of
Learning
Experiences
Skill Inculcation
Strategies/ Use
of Technology

6. Why?
 Curricular and instructional strategies that have a
high probability of affecting students’ ability to
learn and in turn students’ learning achievement
(Joyce and Showers, 2002),
 Professional development programmes have to
focus more on enriching teachers’ knowledge of
the subjects being taught, sharpening appropriate
teaching skills, keeping up with developments in
the individual fields and in education generally,
generating and contributing new knowledge
through creative assignments, and increasing the
ability to monitor students’ work, in order to
provide constructive feedback to students and

7. Multiple forms
 like short-term courses,
 specific skill oriented sessions,
 workshops of different nature,
 demonstrations,
 hands-on experience based training sessions,
 seminars,
 conferences,
 lectures, and invited lectures,
 virtual sessions,
 video as well as teleconferencing modes,
 colloquiums, and reflective forums, and so on.

8. MOOCs
 As an innovative as well as revolutionary move in
the field of education, Massive Open Online
Courses (MOOCs) are mushrooming since the
last four to five years.
 And, the universities are competing to show off
their innovations in the delivery of MOOCs.
 One of the effective mode of delivery of
professional development programmes for
teachers.

9. What and How?
INITIAL TEACHING
PHASE
• Collaborative Introduction
• Readings
• Activities-A range of instructional activities
STRUCTURED
ACTIVITIES OF
INTERACTIVE
PHASE
• Video lectures
• Live video sessions
• Additional video resources
INTERACTIVE-
CUM-POST ACTIVE
PHASE
(INSEPERABLE)
• Assessment
• Forums
• Clinics- Twitter, Face book, Google Plus, Live Chat, etc.

10. Providers
 Coursera and Udacity (Cooper & Sahami, 2013),
edX from Harvard and MIT (Pappano, 2012), are
the popular providers of MOOCs and these days
they are more loosely defined as free, non-credit,
massive courses (Pappano, 2012).

11. In Specific...
Looking in to the early providers:
 American public school teachers have free
access to 15 online Duke courses as part of a
new federal program aimed at improving
professional development for educators.
 Duke is one of four American universities and a
handful of other educational organizations
offering massive free open online courses, in
collaboration with the U.S. Department of
Education.

12. ...
 Udacity, one of the known course providers, make the
teachers enrolled in many subject specific course like
Introduction to Statistics, Introduction to Physics,
Introduction to Psychology, which could be of effective use
to professional development till 12th grade.
 Another trend setter, Udemy offers courses in the broad
fields of Technology, Art, Math, Science, Humanities,
Social Science, and Music.
 The MOOC provider edX-A joint project of Harvard and
MIT- is also gives an array of courses which enables the
professional teachers to have technological, instructional
as well as techno-pedagogic skills. The edX offers courses
from a number of top universities, like UC Berkeley, and
University of Texas.
 The Canvas Network, another popular provider, offers
courses from a variety of universities, like Columbia
University, and Arizona State University.

13. Exemplars...
 Applying Principles of Behaviour in the K-12
Classroom
 Common Core in Action: Math Formative
Assessment
 Implementation and Evaluation of Educational
Technology
 Integrating Engineering into your Science
Classroom
 Student Thinking at the Core
 Foundations of Teaching for Learning

14. Power of MOOCs
 If it is offered free of cost or with a nominal fee, the
education sector will be flourishing like anything.
Thus, advanced technology driven education can be
provided through MOOC to ensure the
implementation of innovations in teaching-learning
process.
 Flexibility aspect of MOOCs-both in time and location
facilitates the training needs of teachers. It may not be
in conflict with their schedule of academic and
personal life. Most teachers work long days then
spend much of their time away from school to plan
and grade. This makes finding time for professional
development a challenge for most. Here the on-
demand nature of MOOC-based learning helps them

15. Further...
 MOOCs provide adaptable content. This feature
allows those responsible for managing
professional development for teachers to
customize the experience for their audience.
 Learning needs to be reinforced over a long
period of time and teachers need to have an
opportunity to practice, implement, ask questions,
try again, and integrate new skills and information
on a schedule that works for them and allows
them to remember the information. MOOCs, if
designed with this strategy in mind, have
enormous potential to meet this need.
 MOOC content is often available for teachers to
adapt to their own teaching.

16. What clashes?
 The key aspects to be addressed for formalizing
non-formal learning are recognition, validation,
and accreditation (RVA).
 Singh (2012) defines recognition, validation, and
accreditation (RVA) of learning outcomes as a
process that makes visible and values the
knowledge, skills, and attitudes that individuals
have obtained in various contexts and means in
different phases of their lives.
 Furthermore, Singh (2012) states that the RVA of
non-formal and informal learning is a key aspect
in making lifelong learning a reality.

17. Future...
 In order to ensure the proper participation, there
should be compulsory quiz programmes and
further, there should be a little bit rigidity in
forward movement (for eg:- if a specific number of
answers are not correct they may not be allowed
to go ahead). Evaluation should be through
software so that the progress sheet or score
sheet can be shown which would be working as a
motivating factor to the learners, otherwise
skipping of the steps will be done. There should
be a standard follows up provisions along with
each and every MOOC.

18. What is to be done in the
context?
In India what can be done
 Initiation by National Council for Teacher Education
(NCTE)
 Level-wise course classification
 Flexible schedule
 Proposal for the tailored courses to the best providers
 Surveying the demands
 Publicity just like GIAN portal
 Motivation to schools of Education to initiate with such
culture/system friendly courses
 One day follow ups till the systematic establishment of
the system
 Orientation by experts

19. Yes!
 Course development team especially and exclusively
from educational technology
 Flexibility ensured programmes
 Mechanism of ensuring attendance for minimum
hours and comments and collaborative activities
 Clinics as reflective platforms
 Certificate leading to vertical mobility in
career/profession
 Less fund required and can be recorded and
transmitted somewhere else as per the demand
 Once it is made can be used as a permanent
ensuring copyright
 Teacher friendly as well as institutional friendly

20. ...
As the enrolment to such courses of professional
nature, so they contribute to the better teaching-
learning