Did you know that the largest provider of free online learning in the world is a small company based in Galway called Alison.com?
With over 750 free online courses and more than 6 million registered learners, Mike Feerick’s company predates the recent MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) movement and illustrates that free access to online learning is a long-term trend that is having a worldwide impact, particularly in the developing world.
The IT Sligo-led European LoCoMoTion Project began its latest delivery of their a online course “Making MOOCs on a Budget” in May. The new version of this course is project based, guiding and supporting participants through all the tasks they need to do to build their online course, showing them how it can be done with very little cost and at much less effort than people think.
For the four months following the course, participants have access to the course leaders and fellow participants all over the world to support them in building their own MOOC.
The project partners are Technical University of Delft, University of Girona, Bielefeld Fachhochschule, Bath Spa University and IT Sligo and we are joined on this project in the Centre for Online Learning by Linda Hegarty, who has recently been working in health education in Tanzania and is passionate about the potential for free online learning in Africa.
To find out more about the project, visit moocs4all.eu.