Essay: MOOCs

5. Language differences
Since MOOCs are opened for global students, due to language problems or learning mode problems, if the students do not good at the language used in these courses, they will become very difficult to catch up with the progress of the course because lecturer will not consider different students’ abilities to accommodate other students or change the teaching method.
6. Hard to Simulate Traditional Hand-on Course
As the students taking MOOCs can only learn theoretical knowledge, it is hard to simulate traditional hand-on course. Some courses such as sports, music or science courses which students may need to have some practical trainings in order to help them understand more about the course. Without the traditional hand-on courses, students may not have that kinds of resources or materials, so that they may hardly to improve their hand-on skills without lecturer’s guide.
7. Cost and copyright to develop MOOCs
Since it provides a free course to student, the universities need to bear all the cost, therefore, it may affect the feasibility or development of MOOCs if universities don’t have any contributions. Besides that, MOOC is a online course, people can easily capture the course content to do illegal things like making CDs to sell.
8. Hardly take care all students
As the MOOCs can let a large number of students to study one course in the same period, although students can ask questions through the web forum or email, some of the teachers may need to teach other courses simultaneously and they may not have enough time to answer all questions from students applied the MOOCs. Moreover, feedback from teachers may not comprehensive or detail enough, so that students may not know their problems accurately.
9. Lack of close supervision
As students apply MOOCs just need to sign in the website to take lessons and have the examination. Students are easily to ask the others to help them to attend the lessons. However, it is hard to track who sign in the website even though it can record the IP address. Also, students can easily cheat in the examination because they can search the answers on the Internet or ask for help in the meantime. Therefore, it may not accurately reflect the ability of students.