Improved virtual research environment using a massive open online research (MOOR) platform

Abstract

Cloud computing is a trend phenomenon in the online education world. It might advance learning and teaching techniques and methods with a creative collaborative virtual environment. It is a state of art internet technology that offers the user the availability of resources and services in a non spatio-temporal dependency which provides an access to large storage space and wide selection of services (Social Media, Email, Web Apps, Office suite…). Cloud computing has a prodigious potential for creating large accessible, flexible and interoperable networked environment that grants remarkable added value features to the Electronic Education (E-ducation). The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is a semi-autonomous networked learning environment, distributed on the cloud, in which open resources were produced and shared by participants worldwide. This technology was the latest innovation in the last few years. Different platforms were developed by several non-profit providers (edX, Coursera, Udacity, etc...) and supported by the worlds most prestigious universities and institution such as MIT, Stanford, Harvard, etc… Those platforms are used by millions of students around the globe. This successful innovation so far has helped the development of E-ducation. This notion yields us to start thinking of extending this innovation approach to improve research in E-ducation. This could be an online platform for research which in return could push the development of online research worldwide and increase the collaboration between universities and institutions. The platform, defined as a Massive Open Online Research (MOOR), consists of a rich online open environment for research with unlimited user participation.