Page 132 - Open and Distance Education In Asia : Good Practice From AAOU Members

112 OPEN AND DISTANCE EDUCATON IN ASIA
Good Practices from AAOU Members

Non-credit Courses MOOCs AND OTHER OPEN EDUCATION
Lifelong Learning Channel. OUJ broadcasts PRACTICES
are designed to satisfy people’s different
requirements for lifetime learning by MOOCs
presenting lectures on TV as extension Before OUJ launched official online courses
programs, building on the academic experience in April 2015, OUJ participated in Japan’s
of OUJ faculty while simultaneously breaking MOOC consortium JMOOC in October 2013
away from beyond the traditional framework as a founding member, released one of the
of higher education. In FY2019, there were JMOOC platform services, and published
218 TV programs produced for the Lifelong some MOOCs.
Learning Channel, with 190 in FY2020.
In April 2014, OUJ offered two MOOCs as the
Non-credit Extension Courses. Working in first release from JMOOC. One of the courses
partnership with relevant organizations, was “NIHONGO STARTER (Japanese primer)”,
OUJ provides open access courses designed which was based on the Japan Foundation’s
to develop professional skills that will help standards for Japanese language learning
accelerate career development. Upon and the Common European Framework of
successful completion of these courses, OUJ Reference for Languages (CEFR). The other
issues both a certificate of completion and MOOC was “Computer System”, which was
a digital badge. These courses are intended remixed from an OUJ regular TV course (the
to bring flexibility to learning pathways and Principal Lecturer was Yoichi Okabe, former
to meet the needs of diverse members of a president of OUJ). The OUJ-MOOC platform
lifelong learning society. Anyone can enroll in was based on the CHiLO Book system, which
these courses, whether they are OUJ students was developed by CCC-TIES, a Japanese
or non-students. In 2020, eight new courses NPO. Considering the diversity of users’ ICT
are planned to be provided with digital badge environments, they adopted a combination
issuing services (two for school programming of eBook (specifically, e-pub 3.0 and iBook),
education, five for mathematical/data traditional LMS (Moodle) and several
sciences and AI, etc.). social media services such as Facebook
(for registration and learner community),
Table 5 YouTube (for video delivery) and Mozilla
The List of OUJ Extension Courses Open Badge (for certification, Open Badge
version 1).
Course title Academic Number
year (April of Badges In 2017, OUJ retreated from the MOOC
to March) Issued platform service and the courses were
Elementary School 2020 366 moved to the Asia Learning Portal managed
Programming
Education: An by Asian Association of Open Universities
Introduction (AAOU0 and the University of the Philippine
Teaching Method of 2020 206 Open University (UPOU).
Scratch Programming

The Open University of Japan (OUJ)