Course Platform

Over a period of six months, a beta version of the course platform funded by TEQIP was designed by in-house programmers at IIT-K. The platform was originally intended to be utilized with three MOOCs, including the MoM course.

The platform was entitled mooKIT to connote its intended use to deliver MOOCs. The mooKIT platform can be differentiated from other platforms in that it is scalable and of low demand on a server. According to Prof. Prabhakar, one of the platform’s architects, mooKIT is also designed to be intuitive to use. He describes other platforms with which he has used as, “quite messy or complicated” (Perris, 2014a). In appealing to mass audiences, as is the case with MOOCs, Prabhakar believes simplicity should be a central design principle. For the participant in a MOOC this means ease of access and ease of navigation. For the designer or instructor, this means ease of customization and ease of managing user traffic.

The mooKIT platform is described as a light weight MOOC Management System (MOOC on MOOCs, 2014d). As noted on the mooKIT website, a guiding principle is, “creating online courses should be as simple as taking them” (mooKIT, 2014). This tagline is unique and greatly expands on the concept of ease of use for online learning to focus not only on participants (or learners), but to also include content developers, programmers and instructors. The platform is characterized as customizable, functional across multiple devices, and to be of low demand on a server. As an open source platform, mooKIT has been designed to appeal to individuals or organizations external to IIT-K who may be interested to use the platform for their own online course initiatives.

In describing and evaluating the mooKIT platform, the technical components and interface/usability aspects will be addressed.