Challenges of integrating MOOCs into the Curriculum of YCM Open University in India

The term Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) was coined by Dave Cormier of University of Prince Edward Island in Canada in the year 2008. However the MOOCs gained popularity in the year 2012, as world’s renowned Universities like Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University started offering MOOCs. The Journey of MOOCs in India started a little late, the Ministry of education formerly known as Ministry of Higher of Human Rights Development MHRD initiated the SWAYAM (Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds) in the year 2014 and it was full fledgedly open to all the educational institutes to prepare, adopt, integrate the MOOCs into their educational framework by the year 2017. Ultimately the outburst of Covid-19 was observed to be the key factor for aggregation of MOOCs around the world as our present educational system was unable to cater the needs of the learners. In view of the above situation the apex educational body of the Indian Educational System, University Grants Commission (UGC) released a circular about integration of MOOCs into Higher education from previous 20% to 40%. This led to a drastic change in the educational structure of Indian educational system. The learners from different disciplines enrolled to the MOOCs available on various platforms such as SWAYAM, UGC-CEC, and NPTEL etc. due to their easy accessibility and on the go learning facility, many State and Central universities have developed their MOOC policies and have been practicing the MOOC integration into their curriculum. YCM Open University being the largest University in capacity of enrolment, lack behind in integrating MOOCs into its educational curriculum. Present study attempts to identify the problems and prospects of integration of MOOCs in curriculum of the YCM Open University. The survey method was implemented to carry out the research, and the researchers produced a structured questionnaire and collected data from the faculties of YCM Open University.