PENANG, 6 November 2017 – The National Advanced IPv6 Centre (NAv6) at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) recently organised a 3-day training workshop on designing Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

The Director of NAv6, Professor Dr. Rosni Abdullah in her introductory remarks, thanked the consortium partners involved in the project and welcomed the participants from various institutions and organizations to the workshop.

The core objective of this workshop is to facilitate educators and technical staff to design, develop and deliver high quality MOOCs using the Open EdX platform. This is aimed at fulfilling the needs of the community, through the successful delivery of the learning modules, in terms of the multimedia content development and access using modern mobile Internet devices.

The USM Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic and International), Professor Dr. Ahmad Farhan Mohd Sadullah, representing the USM Vice-Chancellor, was on hand to officiate the event.

In his opening speech, he said that, “USM is now moving forward in transforming its education system, especially in the long-distance learning field, to offer better content and a flexible learning system.

“Nowadays, the internet and media are very close to us hence, the implementation of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is truly vital as the brick and mortar learning style. Therefore, we need the blended learning programme as we would like to transform our education system for a better future,” he said.

The organization of the ‘Competen-Sea Capacity Building Workshop’ corresponds to the Malaysian Higher Education Blueprint 2015-2025, in providing lifelong learning opportunities to the wider community. Within the blueprint, the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education has identified 10 shifts that will sustain continued excellence in the local higher education system.

This project enables the best South-East Asian Universities to develop a delivery method for accessible, effective yet flexible education and skill development in the remote, marginalized and underprivileged communities.

The event was jointly-organised by various departments and centres at USM, namely KANITA, NAV6, CDAE, and PTPM. It is held in collaboration with the Open University of Netherlands, the Netherlands (OUNL); University Carlos III Madrid, Spain (UC3M); and Universitat des Saarlandes, Germany (USAAR) and supported by the Erasmus+ grant from the European Union.

Text: Nur Fatini Badrul Hisham (MPRC intern)/Editing: Mazlan Hanafi Basharudin