MOOC for Training: How Far It Benefits Employees?

Abstract

As the term 4th Industrial Revolution emerges globally, various industries are moving rapidly towards it. Malaysia, one of the developing countries, is also embracing the 4th Industrial Revolution. However, with the rapid development of industries to catch up to the ever-expanding world, the English proficiency of non-native speakers is worrying, especially in the working field. Certain industries provide training for their employees to improve their English for Occupational Purposes (EOP), but traditional training is time-consuming and could not cater to individuals’ needs. This paper aims to identify the benefits of MOOC for employees’ training. The findings discussed the benefits of MOOC. MOOC is indeed beneficial for employees in terms of providing the opportunity for self-paced learning, lifelong learning and professional development at zero cost. However, there is also an interesting finding whereby employers do not want their employees to use MOOC for training because the former does not want private and confidential information of the organization to be publicized. Overall, the benefits will be able to guide and provide insight for educators and researchers as it is important to know what motivates learners to use MOOC for training.

The Research Framework: Relationship between Characteristic of Lifelong Learning and Preferences of Heutagogy Activities among Students in a Public University in Malaysia

“…Secondly, lack in skills related to lifelong learning (Anthonysamy, 2020;Sidhu et al, 2016;Williams, 2021). The same issues were also reported from the industrial side whereby students were reported lacking in the Lifelong Learning skills (Ghani & Mara, 2018;Rafiq et al, 2019;Wong et al, 2020). The importance of lifelong learning in education has been mentioned in several policies in Malaysia including the Blueprint on Enculturation of Lifelong Learning for Malaysia 2011-2020 (Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia, 2011), Malaysia Education Blueprint 2015-2025 (Higher Education) (Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia, 2015) and the government has allocated quite a budget to support this lifelong learning in education system.…”

Using MOOC to Learn the Python Programming Language

“…Researchers pay attention to such advantages of MOOC as their mass character, lifelong education [23], their being fully or partially free of charge, a possibility to get access to educational material a lot of times, a free schedule for taking online courses [13], internationalization of education [24], independence from social status, a possibility to get a certificate [10], etc. MOOC is a means of branding for higher educational institutions [25], organizations and institutions of various levels whose employees participate in the development of online courses [26].…”

Implementation of MOOC platforms into teaching English to IT specialists

“…Studying the issue of workplace training, particularly learning English for Occupational Purposes in MOOCs, K. Rafiq et al [29] give the following benefits of MOOCs both for employers and employees:…”