MOOCs for medical education: An Indian perspective

In India, there is a strong need of reform measures to improve the quality of medical education being imparted in various medical colleges and institutions. This is partly aggravated by the shortage of healthcare practitioners. As a solution for improving the quality of medical education, an emerging form of eLearning, namely, Massive Open Online Courseware (MOOC) could be used as a potential tool. With its varied advantages, MOOCs have a wide acceptance amongst the global community. MOOC replaces the traditional brick and mortar classrooms by providing an open online knowledge repository and enables a collaborative learning environment. However, for MOOCs to be accepted as a medium for imparting medical education in India, it is necessary that MOOCs is recognised by all the medical colleges and institutions. MOOCs would not only improve the quality of medical education but also, as a spin off, would result in the improvement of healthcare service delivery, thereby benefitting each and every citizen of India.