Christmas comes early for computing MOOC followers

ENGLAND, UK: The first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for Computing in schools goes from strength to strength with the addition of brand new content for students and teachers this week.

20 new ‘learning episodes' are now available as part of phase 2 of the roll out of the free resources.

The new videos add greater depth to the key topics of the MOOC. In response to feedback from MOOC users, the new videos feature more animation, and the content is less segmented. The format for testing followers of the course has also been amended so that questions are available on a separate page, not embedded below each video, to help reinforce knowledge.

The ground-breaking Cambridge GCSE Computing MOOC for schools, shortlisted for a BETT 2014 award, was launched in September 2013 by exam board OCR, Cambridge University Press and the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

The online course is aligned to OCR's pioneering GCSE in Computing and the popular mini ‘Raspberry Pi' computer plays a starring role.

Available for free, and accessible via smart phone, tablets and computers, the MOOC features a rich combination of videos and interactive learning exercises that can be used in the classroom or at home.

The MOOC will be enhanced with further content in January and April 2014.