By Asmahanim Amir
Pix Izwan Azman

BANGI, Feb 23, 2015 – Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) prepared by Malaysian Academics are of world class and used at the international level, said  Higher Education Department director-general,  Prof Datuk Dr Asma Ismail.

She said MOOCs in Malaysia are being used by the students at 20 Public Universities and have attracted the attention of international students.

“Students around the world are also interested the MOOCs that we produce. So there is no problem if we are not from MIT, Harvard or Stanford University” she said after taking part in a  forum titled MOOC Learning: Tsunami of Higher Education, here on Feb 19.

She said online learning such as MOOC, which are online courses open to everybody and everywhere, is the way forward because students nowadays are digitally savvy.

Apart from Prof Asma, the other panellists at the forum were Assoc Prof Dr Richard Buckland from University of New South Wales, Australia, Adam Brimo, Founder and CEO of Open Learning, Prof Datuk Dr Mohamed Amin Embi, Director of Centre for Teaching and Learning Technologies, UKM and Prof Mushtak Al-Arabi of Taylor’s University.

She said her ministry received a lot of feedback from foreign students who want more MOOC courses in the Malay Language about Islamic Finance.

According to her, the panellists from Australia, Dr Buckland and Brimo said that many people want to learn through MOOCs in Malaysia because they want to identify more closely with Asean thinking.

She said Prof Mushtak had indicated that that when he started MOOC at Taylor’s University, most of the viewers were from outside Malaysia.

She also remarked that Malaysia is the first country to give credits to MOOC programmes.

Students who take part in MOOC can get their diplomas or degrees without attending class, and anyone can learn from anywhere in the world, she added.