Abstract
This paper will share Discover Palestine, an interdisciplinary Massive Online Open Course (MOOC), and the first MOOC to be created in Palestine, by the E-Learning Centre, Faculty from the Department of Geography, and Department of Tourism and Archaeology from An-Najah National University in Palestine. The paper traces the process of development of the Discover Palestine MOOC from its early inception as a cross institutional online course, to its current delivery and engagement with a global and diverse group of learners. Using thematic analysis, the reflective experiences of four course team members involved as facilitators/designers in the design and delivery of the MOOC are shared. Three key themes, namely, ‘Informing pedagogies including delivery methods’, ‘A commitment to a national cause’, and ‘Teacher presence’, are presented and contextualized with data evidence. The findings share not only the hurdles the Discover Palestine team have had to navigate in the MOOC development, but importantly, how academic collaborations promoting open education practices offer powerful tools for the reciprocal exchange of knowledge, not least in shifting mindsets, and offering opportunities for shared fields of understanding to be realized in revealing creative, cultural practices, as well as lost histories.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 22-36 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning |
| Volume | 19 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 May 2018 |
Bibliographical note
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Keywords
- Palestine
- MOOC
- pedagogy
- OpenMed