A Low-Visibility, High-Potential Resource in Teachers’ Lifelong Learning: MOOCs

It is of great importance that teachers, who are at the forefront of society's learning journey, continuously update their knowledge and skills to maintain their professional competence and provide a quality learning environment for students, thus continuing lifelong learning. Lifelong learning is an important concept that is increasingly being incorporated into our country's policies. In this regard, distance education offers a wide range of opportunities for lifelong learning, particularly for individuals who are unable to participate in face-to-face training due to its independence from time and space. MOOCs can be considered the most up-to-date and appropriate opportunity distance education offers for lifelong learning. MOOCs are platforms open to everyone's participation over the internet, can include courses on almost any subject, and can reach millions of students. The most important feature that differentiates them from other internet resources is that they are in a course format. Thanks to MOOCs, obtaining certificates from universities recognized worldwide is possible. However, when the Turkish literature was analysed, it was seen that there was not enough emphasis on the potential of MOOCs for teachers. Therefore, in this study, the opportunities offered by MOOCs to teachers, who have an important role in shaping and transforming society, in the context of lifelong learning, were examined. The opportunities were discussed under eight headings: learning regardless of time and place, professional development, personal development, foreign language learning, networking and collaboration, technology use and digital literacy, learning motivation, and job opportunities.