Abstract—Due to the development of the current society, continuous professional development of teachers is an imperative for every educational system. Nowadays MOOCs are on a hype for educational systems, being one of the most discussed and debated university/academia/higher education topics. Still, Romania is beyond other countries in terms of both developing and formal recognising of competences acquired through a MOOC course. This is direct related to the scepticism of opening up education toward professional development of Romanian teachers, among other factors like language barriers, inadequate infrastructure, lack of time, lack of digital competences and skills (in order to know how to work in the online learning environment) etc.
The authors consider MOOCs as a sustainable initiative for professional development of Romanian teachers. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to present the results of an investigation carried out for more than 1000 Romanian preuniversitary teachers, analysing their needs regarding this topic. The main finding amid teachers’ training needs, underlined their preference for developing and updating the practical knowledge based on specific examples.
Moreover, we will address the need for changing the Romanian educational MOOCs’ policies, but also more future and deeper topics to be studied in the following periods.
Index Terms—Continuous professional development, higher education, MOOC, teachers.
Laura Malita is with West University of Timisoara, Faculty of Political Sciences, Philosophy and Communication Sciences, Department of Philosophy and Communication Sciences, Timisoara, 300223, Romania (e-mail: laura.malita@e-uvt.ro).
Laurentiu-Gabriel Tiru is with West University of Timisoara, Faculty of Sociology and Psychology, Department of Sociology, Timisoara, Romania (e-mail: laurentiu.tiru@e-uvt.ro).
Gabriela Grosseck is with West University of Timisoara, Faculty of Sociology and Psychology, Department of Psychology, Timisoara, Romania (e-mail: gabriela.grosseck@e-uvt.ro).
Cite: Laura Malita, Laurentiu Gabriel Tiru, and Gabriela Grosseck, "MOOCs for Teachers Professional Development — A University Challenge?," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 235-239, 2018.