By Kuah Guan Oo
Photo by Mohd Hasrul Hamdan
SERDANG, 7 April (UPM) – Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) became the first university in the country to launch an online platform for its academic staff to impart knowledge to anyone interested.
The online platform known as “Putra Massive Open Online Course” or PutraMOOC was unveiled by Dato’ Seri Idris Jusoh, Education Minister 11, here today.
PutraMOOC is the UPM’s latest public service to the community and the world at large where courses on various areas of knowledge are made available through video lectures, interactive forums , chats, quizzes and other forms of assessment.
The programme that is considered a 21st century learning environment, is open to all who are interested, free of charge. They only need to register online at http://putramooc.upm.edu.my/www/main.htm.
Each course will last seven to eight weeks.
Available from today are the courses on “Agriculture and Man” and “Malay Arts”. Other courses will be made available when they are modified from UPM’s in-campus courses for PutraMOOC.
Dato’ Seri Idris Jusoh congratulated UPM for being the first Malaysian university to offer such a programme, saying that it would fill a void in the people’s quest for knowledge.
He noted that by hosting PutraMOOC, UPM is among the top universities in the world like Harvard that are offering such extension learning programmes.
He said he had first broached on the subject of MOOC with the representatives of public universities last March 11, 2014 and that these universities registered themselves as OpenCourseWare (OCW) Consortium first, before migrating to MOOC.
His ministry, he said, would consider allocating RM500 million under the 11th Malaysia Plan for all the public universities to implement the MOOC.
The minister said he also saw the potential of the programme expanding to a stage for working people could opt to study part-time to fulfil their desire for a university degree if they did not have one.
UPM Vice Chancellor Prof Dato’ Dr Mohd Fauzi Hj Ramlan in his welcoming statement said the development of PutraMOOC is in line with the Global Open Education Initiative of the United Nations.
Through PutraMOOC, UPM is also offering the compulsory course on “Islamic Civilization and Asian Civilization” (TITAS) that can be used by freshmen in all public universities.
This new platform of learning is also in line with the National Higher Education Strategic Plan that includes life-long learning, E-learning, internationalisation and knowledge transfer.
For more information, please contact Assoc. Prof. Dr Alyani Ismail, Deputy Director (Teaching and Learning Innovation), Centre for Academic Development (CADe) at 603 – 8946 6175 or aida@upm.edu.my
-- upm/kgo
