Korea University’s Four Quality Lectures now Available on K-MOOC

 K-MOOC (Korea’s Massive Open Online Course) began registration October 14 on its website (http://www.kmooc.kr) through the initiative of the Ministry of Education and under the supervision of the National Institute for Lifelong Education.

 MOOC is an online education program that offers a variety of courses available to anyone and accessible from everywhere, free of charge. Differentiated from conventional online lectures, MOOC provides a new learning environment where learners can interact with other learners as well as the instructors; features, such as: Q&A, Discussion, Quizzes, and Assignments Boards allow for the added interaction.

 K-MOOC will offer 27 courses from ten major universities in Korea this year, and continue to expand the course options to over 500 by 2018.

Korea University also takes part in K-MOOC to offer some of its quality lectures.

 In 2015, four courses will be offered: Professor Soon Koo Myoung’s Introduction to Civil Law, Professor Kyungho Sim’s Classical Literature and Historical Culture, Professor Dae-Mann Kim’s Quantum Mechanics for IT/NT/BT, and Professor Jong Phil Lee’s General Theory of Relativity for Dummies.

 These lectures offered by Korea University are accessible in the ‘Open Education’ section ((https://openeducation.blackboard.com/) on Blackboard, Korea University’s learning management system, as well as the official K-MOOC website.

 In September, Korea University surveyed 388 students on MOOC, gauging their interests in the program.

“I want to thank Korea University for this program,” said one of the students, “for it’s quite frustrating that you can’t take a course because you already have another at the same time. It will be a lot easier to take whatever courses I want on MOOC. I hope it will be further developed.”

 The Center for Teaching and Learning at Korea University is in charge of planning and designing more courses for K-MOOC. It also offers opportunities to earn credits for KU students. Over 250 students are currently registered for Professor Soon Koo Myoung’s Introduction to Civil Law course this semester.

 “I hope this will provide everyone with the opportunities to listen to quality lectures for free,” said Jaeho Chung, Chief Director of the Center, “we expect that MOOC will offer a new learning environment where everyone shares his or her own ideas and thoughts with one another. Learning experiences are no longer confined to lecture rooms where students do nothing but listen and the instructors do all the talking.”