Muscat- Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) organised a ceremony to launch a trial platform for Massive Open Online Courses (SQUMOOC) at the university on Tuesday.

It is the first course to be offered through its Digital Citizenship programme. The ceremony was held under the patronage of H E Dr Hamood Khalfan al Harthi, Undersecretary for Education and Curriculum in the Ministry of Education.

The platform is a by-product of two funded research projects at SQU led by Dr Aisha al Harthi from the College of Education.

The projects are: ‘Designing, developing, implementing and evaluating an effective MOOC at Sultan Qaboos University’ funded by the Deanship of Research at SQU and a project titled ‘Developing Distance Education for Higher Education Institutions in Oman’ through MOOCs: Design, Impact, and Culturally-Appropriate Modeling funded by The Research Council.

Dr Aisha said that MOOCs are courses that are offered by many universities across the world to provide knowledge to the public, without having to officially enrol in the universities. These courses can enrol large numbers of students.

With the platform, SQU seeks to support lifelong learning, enrich human knowledge for individuals and improve their professional capabilities, and create effective partnership with the community towards an interactive and digital partnership.

“Anyone with an interest in MOOCs can register to take the courses through the platform using the newly created link (mooc.squ.edu.om). There are no special skills or prior experiences to take up the course.

“This course is currently offered in Arabic, but future courses can be in English for a wider audience. “Upon finishing the course, students will be awarded a completion certificate in addition to badges that will be awarded based on gaining certain skills,” she said.

The Digital Citizenship course ends on October 3.

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