Design and delivery of the Life Skills MOOC

New Delhi, November 29, 2017: A large number of young and aspiring minds are completing degree courses and are in need of acquiring life skills. In order to empower them with specific sets skills, Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), New Delhi intend to evolve a need based and result oriented Online Course to facilitate Engineers and Engineering students acquire expected skills in a highly competitive world. This Online Course is expected to fill a critical gap. In this regard, a two day workshop was organised on 27-28 November, 2017 at Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK) for the Life SKills MOOC providers. Members of Consortium partners (IIT Kanpur, Commonwealth of Learning and Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia) discussed strategy for courses to be delivered on mooKIT platform. Day one started with the welcome speech by Dr. Manas R. Panigrahi, CEMCA-COL, New Delhi. Dr. T.V Prabhakar, Head, CTDE, IIT-Kanpur and leader of mooKIT project spoke on the Overview of processes in a MOOC. Dr. V. Balaji, COL, spoke on the Diversification in MOOCs and a global overview of progress and concerns. Prof. H.C. Verma, IITK and Dr. B Jirli, BHU shared their personal experiences in delivering and managing MOOCs. In the second half of the workshop the invitees assembled in the studio of Media Lab and recorded trial introductory video which was followed by the feedback on the videos by the experts. On the second day of the workshop Prof. Ramabrahmam and Dr. Panigrahi presented an Overview of proposed MOOC on Life Skills. It was followed by a Hands-on session - Trails with mooKIT, where faculty members experienced the procedure for uploading videos, adding resources, handling the Forums and Hangout and designing assignments. Shorter trials of the Hands-on session with the student interfaces gave the faculty an appreciation of what the student sees in a typical course offered via mooKIT. At the end of the session the recorded introductory videos were reviewed. Finally, members reviewed - the time schedule for the course, the weekly sequences of modules, online hosting of the course, course access from mobile phones, assessment techniques – all resulting into complete discussion on course delivery. The workshop was essentially held to plan the course - Life Skills MOOC. The workshop was made a success by the active participation of the subject matter experts identified by CEMCA; representatives from COL and CEMCA; Dr. B Jirli, BHU; Prof. H.C. Verma, Prof T.V. Prabhakar and the IITK team. The participants were renowned experts in research, education and training in their own specialized domains. Approximately 19 participants attended the workshop. The workshop concluded with the time line on offering a new course on Life Skills MOOC for Engineers starting from May 2018.