Executive Summary

Institutional MOOC involvement

Czech HEIs are mostly still in the process of finding their way to their own MOOC courses. The Czech Association of Distance Teaching Universities (ÄŒADUV) at the moment does not register any Czech MOOC course that would comply with criteria proposed by EADTU and comply with quality framework necessary for European OpenUpEd platform.

MOOC courses are however very lively discussion topics and receive attention in both media and conferences. Many of university teachers recommend to their students to take part in the international MOOC courses as a relevant source of complementary information and more and more students and lifelong learners use offers of MOOC course in foreign institutions.

The commercial institutions gradually widen their portfolio of online courses that they call MOOC in order to attract interest of customers. Usually these are short non-tutored open online courses from the offer of the foreign MOOC platforms.

The usual blocking factor for the Czech universities to create their own MOOCs is the lack of funding and also shortage of experience with providing the open online education. Most institutions need to adapt their internal regulations to ensure proper quality of the courses to place their MOOCs to foreign platforms. In the Czech Republic there is no Open University and purely distance study programmes are offered by minimum of universities. Thus online education strives for acceptance and finds its use only in blended learning and courses of continuing education and lifelong learning.

At the national level there is an apparent positive position towards development of MOOCs demonstrated by approval by government of Digital Education Strategy 2020, where MOOCs are one of the planned activities.

Keywords

Czech Republic · MOOC · MOOC research · OER research