Professional Development How to improve teaching skills

Distance learning is a mode of delivering education and instruction, often on an individual basis, to people who are not physically present in a traditional setting such as a classroom. Distance learning provides access to learning when the source of information and the learners are separated by time and distance, or both.

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are recent developments in distance education. They are aimed at large-scale interactive participation and open access via the web or other network technologies.

There is a great number of online educational platforms:

The most popular of them are: edX is one of the leading sites for accessing MOOCs, or massive open online courses. The venture was founded by Harvard and MIT, and offers classes from those prestigious institutions, as well as material from an expanding list of partners. (

MIT OpenCourseWare is a free publication of MIT course materials that reflects almost all the undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity. OCW does not grant degrees or certificates. OCW does not provide access to MIT faculty. Materials may not reflect entire content of the course. (

FutureLearn is a massive open online course learning platform founded in December 2012 as a company wholly owned by The Open University in Milton Keynes, England. It is the first UK-led massive open online course learning platform, and as of March 2015 included 54 UK and international University partners and—-unlike similar platforms— -includes four non-university partners: the British Museum, the British Council, the British Library and the National Film and Television School. (

Udacity is a for-profit educational organization. It is a company focused on merging education with technology to help make learning accessible, engaging, and effective to the world. There are currently 14 different classes that students can enroll in — all related to technology: Introduction to Computer Science, Web Development, Interactive Rendering, Artificial Intelligence, HTML5, Game Development, Applied Cryptography, and others. All courses are free for students to take and it can be done at their leisure. (

Coursera is an online portal that hosts courses from universities around the world. It was founded in 2012 and as of May, 2015, Coursera had more than 1000 courses from 119 institutions and 13 million users from 190 countries. All courses offered by Coursera are accessible for free but you can need to pay fee if you want to get a certificate. Coursera offers a mobile app for iOS and Android operating systems. (

How does it work? (on the basis of Coursera)

1.To become a participant, you should log in. There are two ways to log in to Coursera: - Log in with a Facebook account; - Create an /password combination. Basic Steps:

2.Find courses that interest you by browsing the course catalog. There are courses in physics, engineering, humanities, medicine, biology, social sciences, mathematics, business, computer science, and other subjects. As of May 2015, 28 specializations are listed on the website. To access full course content, you’ll need to enroll in a course.

Coursera courses approximate from four to ten weeks long. Each week you will receive To-do List, which will include required activities to be completed during the week.

It also contains daily schedule and some pieces of advice concerning the way how it should be done.

Each course includes short video lectures on different topics and assignments to be submitted.

The courses provide quizzes, exercises, weekly tests, graded assignments, and a final project or exam.

Web forums are provided for courses, and some students also arrange face to face study meet-ups using meetup.com, or online meetups.

On completion, students can receive verified certificates. Course Certificates are credentials that showcase what you’ve learned on Coursera. To earn a Course Certificate, you must earn a passing grade in a course, have a completed certificate profile and pay the associated fee.

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