Event: TASCHA’s Maria Garrido discusses MOOCs for development

TASCHA’s Maria Garrido will be speaking at the University of Washington’s Change group on Tuesday, February 28, 2017 at 12pm in room CSE 203.

The advent of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) boded major shifts in alternative education across the globe; suddenly anyone with access to the internet could take a course from a world-leading university, usually free of cost. The implications for education and international development were wide and complex, opening a new channel of fresh questions for researchers. In 2015, the Technology and Social Change Group (TASCHA), in partnership with, USAID, IREX, and CourseTalk, launched the Advancing MOOCs for Development Initiative (AMDI), lead by Maria Garrido, with an aim to better understand the relatively uncharted MOOC landscape. The first research report, focusing on Colombia, the Philippines, and South Africa, was published in April 2016, and contributed surprising and unprecedented results to the international MOOC field. The authors believe this study has made a significant strides towards understanding MOOC usage in less-developed country contexts that both provides stakeholders in workforce development and education with insights and offers a foundation on which future research can be built.

We invite you to join us for “An Examination of MOOC Usage for Professional Workforce Development Outcomes in Colombia, the Philippines, & South Africa through the Lens of Social Innovation” where Maria will discuss recent findings and contributions surrounding these new learning platforms in advancing employability outcomes of youth analyzed through the lens of social innovation theory.