From lecture halls to online portals: The rise of K-MOOC in Korea

K-MOOC offers diverse online courses in English and Korean as instructors emphasize comprehensive content and engaging assignments to maintain student participation.

Courses taught by Ewha Womans University professors, available on the K-MOOC website. [EWHA WOMANS UNIVERSITY]

K-MOOC, or Korea Massive Open Online Courses, is a platform that provides access to a broad range of both local and international courses for students interested in various fields.

Many of K-MOOC’s unique characteristics set it apart from other online learning environments. One is that the website is available in both English and Korean, enabling students both in and out of Korea to easily enroll.

The platform also guarantees high-quality education similar to traditional settings, all at the enrollees’ own pace.

Oh Jin-hwan, a professor teaching at Ewha Womans University's Division of International Studies, is also an instructor of the K-MOOC course titled, “Poverty, Inequality, and Development Cooperation.”

According to Oh, it is important to ensure appropriate comprehensibility in online learning when preparing for the K-MOOC courses.

“As an instructor, I keep in mind that I will not meet the course enrollees in real life,” Oh said. “Unlike students that I teach in a physical classroom, MOOC-takers cannot seek immediate clarification when met with difficulties."

"The course content, therefore, must be dissected more slowly than regular classes."

To ensure smooth online learning, it is also crucial to tackle the level of course difficulty from different perspectives.

“K-MOOCs are open courses that can be taken online by the general public and credit-seeking students,” said Park Se-hee, a contract-based researcher at the Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning and K-MOOC content developer.

“Therefore, we consider the appropriateness of the topic for students as well as the popularity, differentiation from existing materials, demand among learners, usefulness and the university's development plans.”

With the perks of taking virtual classes without time constraints, however, comes the risk of low engagement and procrastination.

Although one might have strong reasons to initially enroll, the motivation to see the course through can be hard for some.

For instructors to maintain consistent participation rates, Professor Oh mentioned the importance of assigning various tasks throughout courses.

“Assignments are given to discourage procrastination and increase continuous engagement on the enrollees’ end,” said Professor Oh. “Additional projects are sometimes assigned to students who take both the online and offline classes for extra credit.”

At Ewha Womans University, the number of students taking K-MOOCs is on a slight rise.

There were 4,078 students enrolled in 22 accredited courses through K-MOOC during the fall 2023 semester. The figure is up 1.42 percent compared to the spring 2023 semester, which had 4,021 students enrolled in 22 courses.

Despite their overall convenience and facile structure, the production of MOOCs demands effort and time. It requires the cooperation of the instructors and content developers, who tailor the content to fit a commodious layout.

“K-MOOCs eliminate the boundaries of face-to-face classes,” researcher Park said. “We strive to deliver course materials efficiently by utilizing interviews with experts, dialogues with students, various experiments, exercises and re-enactment videos.”

Professor Oh also says the process behind the curation of MOOCs is lengthy.

The instructor sends over the material in a PowerPoint presentation file to the content developers, who then work on the course’s visual appeal and maximize accessibility. The process sometimes takes months to complete.

“Ewha thankfully has a professional team of developers whom I was able to trust and comfortably communicate with to get the final product to its current complete form,” said Professor Oh. “The developers were usually welcoming toward my ideas even though we had different expectations originally.”

This article has been contributed by Fatima Zahra Bekkali of Ewha Voice, an English-language publication from Ewha Womans University.

BY STUDENT REPORTER FATIMA ZAHRA BEKKALI [bekkali.fz02@ewha.ac.kr]