Converging Online and Class-Room Methods: A Promising Mode of Knowledge Sharing in Digital Age?

Abstract

The emergence of massive open online courses (MOOCs) is considered as one of the most disruptive changes that happened in the field of education in the last decade. They are playing an important role in democratising access to knowledge across the globe and many countries, including India, are contemplating the use of such courses for addressing their mass educational requirements. In this context, it is important to explore how certain components of MOOCs like online videos and online discussion forums could be converged with traditional classroom methods for giving broader access to education, without compromising the quality of learning and instruction. This article is a case study in this direction in the background of a pedagogical experiment done at the National Law University Delhi, in collaboration with the CopyrightX program of the Harvard Law School. The article describes how a dynamic comparative copyright law course was developed by merging online and offline teaching methods. The article not only analyses the learning implications from this pedagogical experiment for evolving other comparative law courses, but also analyses the broader lessons for designing similar courses in other subjects.