Massive Open Online Courses address skills demand or gap in sectors
Atlantic Technological University’s Online, Flexible, Professional, Development (OFPD) Head of Innovation Gavin Clinch has revealed that over 2,000 learners have now signed up to a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on freecourses.atu.ie since the website was relaunched by ATU President Orla Flynn earlier this month.
The Higher Education 4.0 Project Theme II Lead detailed that the latest figure of 2,398 has brought the number of participants on ATU’s free courses’ website to 35,308 registered users as of last week.
Gavin Clinch and Senior Instructional Designer Louise Kearins were central to promoting the MOOCs, making presentations at both the ‘MOOCs for Industry’ evening at ATU Sligo and the ‘MOOCs for the Environment’ event at ATU Galway over November.
Outlining that ATU now offers over 30 free courses – 22 of which were created under the Higher Education 4.0 Project – they emphasised the educational value of these free, short, online courses to the university, the lecturer and the learner – and to the external agencies, industries and businesses which have collaborated in creating MOOCs to meet a skills demand or gap in their respective sector.
Speaking at the relaunch of the freecourses.atu.ie website in early November, ATU President Dr Orla Flynn noted that given the wide range of free courses, from Lean Construction to Fundamentals of Garden Design, there is something for everyone to “dip their toe in the water”.
“These short online courses will give those learners a little bit of confidence – and they will see that education is not all that scary and that they can come in and learn and enjoy it,” she said. “Maybe, they will then come along and do another programme that has an accreditation attached to it, like a micro-credential or even a major award.”
Among the many free courses on offer are Health & Safety, Introduction to Marketing, Social Robotics, the Sustainable Development Goals, and Ocean Pollution.
In addition to the relaunch of the freecourses.atu.ie website over the ‘MOOCs for Industry’ evening, there were six elevator pitches from David Collery on Lean Construction; Edel Costello, Health & Safety; Perry Share and John Pender, Social Robotics; Lisa Dunne, Introduction to Marketing; Maria Dermiki, Repurposing Surplus Food Waste for Industry; and John Scahill on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Dr Scahill was also among the guest speakers at the MOOCs for the Environment evening at ATU Galway on November 13, along with Dr Roisin Nash (Ocean Pollution) and 2024 Bloom Gold medal winner Leonie Cornelius – all of whom have created short courses in their chosen fields of expertise.
The respective presentations were followed by a lively discussion, moderated by Higher Education 4.0 Communications Lead Donal Loftus, at ATU Galway. One of the topics discussed was the importance of the environmental MOOCs in educating people and creating awareness, with representatives from Kinvara Tidy Towns among those in the audience to recognise that these free courses can be an invaluable resource for community groups.
For more on ATU’s MOOCs, go to https://freecourses.atu.ie.
