While massive open online courses have seen some success in the developing world, the research needed to understand how these courses could be improved to adapt to both the capacity and culture of developing countries remains limited — a significant hurdle that prevents further use of MOOCs among students who need these programs most.
At last week’s SXSWedu conference in Austin, Texas, the U.S. Agency for International Development and CourseTalk, a site for student-written reviews of MOOCs, launched the $1.55 million Advancing MOOCs for Development Initiative, a two-year public-private partnership that will look into online course enrollment in Colombia, the Philippines and South Africa.
Research will be conducted by the Technology & Social Change Group, a network at the University of Washington’s Information School that examines the use of information and communications technologies in addressing social and economic challenges, with the help of IREX, a nonprofit implementing mostly education and media projects.