Technology development eases people to gain knowledge from everywhere. For instance, attending a course should come to a place and is limited by time, yet due to development of technology a course could be carried out online or so-called online course. Online course is a new medium of learning trough online. It eases people to learn and interact whenever and wherever. “This online course, in fact, aims at facilitating us in learning and sharing with whomever,” stated Deborah Mak, an e-Education Coordinator of U.S. Embassy as a speaker of a workshop of Presentation MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course). The workshop was organized by American Corner (Amcor) of UMY on Wednesday (13/5) in Mini Theater of UniversitasMuhammadiyah Yogyakarta.
The online course is a new medium of learning not only languages but also other subject knowledge. “Joining online course would ease us to learn many aspects as issues of government or social. We also could share with and meet new people from other countries. The point is that this online course facilitates us to share with people from other countries,” she elucidated.
Deborah inserted that there arerequirements of joining online course. First, minimum age is 18 years old since this online course only provides programs from universities. Second, participants are required to register on www.atamerica.or.id, www.coursera.org, or www.edx.org. “Third, after registration, we could begin the online course based on provided choices on the websites such as opting courses and universities,” she added.
The merits of joining online course are in term of time, place, and our need. “Joining the online course does not need to pay some fee. What we need is only an internet connection. We could use Diablo Valley College (DVC) or Skype. The online course provides a certificate as evidence that we have joined online course. To have the certificated, we have to pay 50-200 US$. The other requirement to get the certificate is that our participation in the online course is minimum 75%. The other advantage is that we could choose the facilitator or lecturer,” she continued.
Nevertheless, the online course also has shortages as a problem of internet connection. This problem has ever been faced by several people who are accustomed to participating online course. “To cope with the internet connection problem, we could make group of five or ten and employ a big screen. It might help to deal with low internet connection,” she suggested.
Even though there were problems, they could be overcome. Many people are interested in the online course a pupils, students, teachers, and lecturers. It displayed that many teachers participated on the online course workshop.
