From Distance Education to Massive Open Online Courses in Taiwan: Progressing with a Global Perspective and Local Commitments

This chapter introduces distance education and open education in Taiwan with a focus on its recent development on massive open online courses (MOOCs). To explore the MOOC experiences in Taiwan, we interviewed two MOOC design team members and their director at a local university. Our findings are presented in five emergent themes: the MOOC goals, the MOOC faculty recruitment, the MOOC design and development, the interaction on MOOCs, and the MOOC uses.We discuss the challenges, including the difficulty to recruit MOOC faculty, the lack of models and resources for MOOC design and development, and the lack of emphasis on peer learning to engage learners. We also discuss the opportunities that MOOCs bring to Taiwan from a global and local perspective, including transforming higher education into a learner-centered paradigm of education and advancing society. We hope MOOCs will continue to stimulate learners to achieve personal goals, to contribute to communities, and to advance society in Taiwan, which may be a way leading to the ultimate goal of education.