Explanation of Strategies for approaching MOOCs in Higher Education Curricula

MOOCs are creative opportunities for instructors and students to expand their instructional roles, and make use of their own capabilities and skills in instruction and learning affairs on a novel informational and communicational basis. The purpose of this study is to identify and explain the strategies for approaching MOOCs in higher education curricula in Iran. This study is applicative and the method employed in conducting it is a qualitative one. The statistical society includes some of the experts in curriculum development, developers and instructors of MOOC-based courses and the course participants, among which 14 people have been selected using purposive sampling. The project data has been collected through semi-structured interviews. The findings indicate that the most important strategies in easing the application of MOOCs in higher education curricula are: effective curriculum development for MOOCs, increasing international communications in higher education, social and cultural preparation in order to make use of MOOCs, having strategic plans for MOOCs in higher education, implementing suitable executive mechanisms in order to optimize the use of MOOCs.