I think mixing and matching will be beneficial for my current studies, as I will be able to tailor the program according to my preferences - take some courses which are more interesting and suitable for me and my country's context and exclude those which I have already learned previously or are too theoretical. 

I think this approach will be suitable for almost every kind of learners and every type of learning (short online courses are already matching to learner's preferences)
However, I think it is necessary to have 'default' model of the programme - which means having a list of compulsory subjects which are essential for the programme. Later on, this 'default' model can be customised according to the learner's interests. 

After Bologna Declaration in 1999, most of the Europian countries have a similar tertiary educational system which enables students to choose the courses during their undergraduate and postgraduate studies. Georgia joined the Bologna Process from 2005, therefore I could also tailor the studies during my BA and previous postgraduate degree. As I mentioned above, we had a list of mandatory courses, which we had to cover during our studies at the university. The semester, professor of the course, time and even small seminar group was depending on our choice. This free choice is very important for the students for several reasons: first, BA and MA students are considered as adults and hey should be able to choose the subjects, professors and time they want to take the course. Secondly, students are held responsible for their choices, which is an important life lesson for a student, who is pursuing a degree; and thirdly, many students tend to work during their studies and they need to be able to choose specific days and hours when they study and when they have time to work. In my country, postgraduate courses usually start after 6 PM which gives the opportunity to students to work during the day.  

As for this programme - I don't think the structure and Erasmus plus regulations give the opportunity to change the courses according to students' preferences. However, in each university, we have the possibility to choose additional subjects/courses we want to learn.

Albert Bandura has proposed the concept of reciprocal determinism to describe his view that human development is an interaction between a person, person’s behaviours, and environment and the links between them are bidirectional, thus they influence and have an effect on each other (Shaffer, 2009). He refers to reciprocal determinism as a model of causation and foundation of social (cognitive) learning theory (Bandura, 1989).

I agree to Bandura’s idea that ‘People are both products and producers of their environment’ (Bandura, 1989). We can say that our behaviour can be influenced by our attitudes, beliefs, emotions, and prior experience (good or bad) or by different stimuli available in the environment. At the same time, our behaviour can have an effect on the environment and crucial characteristics of our personality can be affected by the environment or by feedback from our behaviour (Gerrig, 2013).   

References:
Athanasou, J. A. (2008). Adult educational psychology. Rotterdam: Sense.
Bandura, A. (1989). Social cognitive theory. In R. Vasta (Ed.), Annals of child development. Vol.6. Six theories of child development (pp. 1-60). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Gerrig, R. (2013). Psychology and Life (20th ed.). Pearson. 

WolframAlpha - search engine, encyclopedia and calculator. Displays information in short organised way. Why use it - if you want to save time and get concise information without googling and reading several pages.
Canva; Piktochart - free poster, info graphic, report, presentation maker with nice templates and designs. Why use it - if you want to create professional looking banner or poster or info graphic and don't know how to use Photoshop or illustrator - this is great tool. Free templates and shapes can satisfy anyone.
Survey Monkey ; Google Forms -  both tools are helpful for making surveys and questionnaires. Free versions support most common survey question types and data analysis. 

Authors describe demographic characteristics of MOOC students and show that mean age of typical student is less than 30 years old and overall, about 75% is less than 35 years old. MOOCs are dominated by males – both as learners and as teachers: male-to-female enrolment ratio is about 2:1. The authors also analysed employment and socioeconomic status or MOOC learners – apparently, half of the learners are working full time, the rest are students, part-time employed, unemployed or retired. Also, about 25% of MOOC registrants are full-time educators who take courses for professional development in subjects they teach. About one third of MOOC students live in the United Stated and another one-third – in Europe. Only 4% of students enrolled in Coursera live I Africa. 

The article suggests that students who are most likely to benefit from MOOCs are self-regulated learners, have flexible schedules, are digitally literate, have access to computer and internet and are proficient in English. There are also issues which undermine the legitimacy on MOOCs such as lack of credit and trustworthiness of the content. 

Authors summarise demographics stating that most common MOOC student is an American, white, college-educated employed male in his mid-20s to 30s. They suggest that institutions must redesign MOOCs and policy makes must have accurate data to make decisions about MOOCs.

Glass, C. R., Shiokawa‐Baklan, M. S., & Saltarelli, A. J. (2016). Who Takes MOOCs? New Directions for Institutional Research, 2015(167), 44-55. doi:10.1002/ir.20153

Phirangee, K., & Malec, A. (2017). Othering in online learning: an examination of social presence, identity, and sense of community. Distance Education, 1-13.

 

The main criticism and disadvantage of MOOCs are several barriers for learners: language, ICT illiteracy, no access to the internet and/or computer and the final certificate which may not be acknowledged by employees all over the world (Glass et al, 2016). 

It is difficult to say who gains more from MOOCs: tens of thousands of students who enrol and watch several videos, thousands of students who complete the courses and get certificates or the universities who develop expensive online platforms and offer them for free. According to Shimon Schocken ‘essential role of education is not teaching alone, it is to provide environments for self-learning’ (Schocken, 2012). MOOCs definitely create the learning environment for self-regulated, motivated students with internet access and proficiency in English. In the long run, only time will show what is the future of MOOCs in education. 

References:
Argawal, A. (2013, January). Why Massive Open Online Courses (still) Matter. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/anant_agarwal_why_massively_open_online_courses_still_matter
Glass, C. R., Shiokawa‐Baklan, M. S., & Saltarelli, A. J. (2016). Who Takes MOOCs? New Directions for Institutional Research, 2015(167), 44-55. doi:10.1002/ir.20153

Norvig, P. (2012, February). The 100 000 student classroom. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_norvig_the_100_000_student_classroom
Schocken, S. (2012, June). The self-organizing computer course. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/shimon_schocken_the_self_organizing_computer_course/transcript?language=en

Since I have not yet taken any online course except Research Methods and teaching adults online from Open University of Cyprus I do not have the ideal image of an online teacher. 

However, I would like to be present, supportive and inclusive teacher. By present I mean constantly commenting, replying to my students questions or discussions, be not only the moderator of the discussions but equal participant. By supportive – I mean helping my students to overcome difficulties, by sharing additional materials and if necessary having consultations with them. And by inclusive – I mean trying to reach to everyone, listen to everyone and consider their ideas. 

I would like to have computer literate students, preferably, or if not brave students who will be willing to engage in this online endeavour with me and discover new interesting educational tools. 

I think by giving them interesting materials to read/watch, motivating them to look for answers and think critically and sometimes maybe being their online friend or a mentor – I could change their lives.. maybe a little bit. 

I think I have been quite active and engaged during this course, I like exploring new tools and using them, so I’d say, I am like the student I would like to have. 

I was not very enthusiastic about the mini-course project from the beginning, that was why I agreed to prepare the unit of ‘learning styles’ when it was suggested by my group member. However, after getting the feedback from Andreas and reading more about the learning styles, I realized that it was really a myth and I did not want to prepare a course on something I did not believe in. After some discussions we agreed on the topic I could do instead of ‘learning styles’ and I started to work on it. 

I have known my group members for more than a year now and I know their approaches towards learning. I knew from the beginning that one person in my group was quite rigid and hard to work with, as their approach to learning process is quite traditional and they rarely change their views on something. We had some misunderstandings on how the course should look in our group, as our perspectives and approaches are different. Some of us wanted it to be more personal (not traditional, academic style), with less formal language and creative design, while others were simply following the structure and the wording of the original online course delivered by Andreas. 

I like when things are structured and organized, therefore I really liked the book design in my section, as it is simple to use and well structured. Also, because it was different and no-one else even from the other groups had it. However, I had to change it into separate pages. This was a little bit frustrating and upsetting for me. 

It is not the first time I had to work in a group, I think I am really good at communication with people and group works. I think in this group, we did not have enough time to meet more frequently and elaborate more comprehensive model of our course or try to convince each-other in our views. 

Despite all the differences, I think in the end we as a group managed to create interesting and cohesive course and enjoyed doing it. I am happy with the consensus we managed to achieve and I enjoyed creating and designing my unit.