Special mechanism to ensure safety of online education — Idris

GEORGE TOWN: The Higher Education Ministry has already placed a special mechanism to ensure flexible online education is safe for all.

Its minister Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh said the implementation of the more flexible education which utilised different learning styles had clearly put Malaysia’s higher education, a step above the rest.

However, he said the government had drafted a security measure to monitor the flexible online education to prevent fraud or cheating cases.

“Security measures such as voice recognition, eye recognition and biometric verification will ensure that we know who is writing on the other side of the line,” he said after officiating the Flexible Education Colloquium 2016 at the Universiti Sains Malaysia here yesterday.

Idris said Malaysia would soon become the first country in the world to develop a national policy on credit recognition for the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) platform.

He added the initiative would allow students the world over to pursue their studies online for free while credit recognition would be given upon completion.

“By having our own MOOC as a way of encouraging flexible learning, we can reduce the duplication of learning and recognise the lessons and experiences gained outside the traditional or conventional classroom,” he noted.

Idris said the Malaysian Qualification Agency ( MQA) had been given the mandate to implement MOOC, plus credit recognition and transfer initiative, which would enable all MOOC courses from Malaysia and abroad to be registered in Malaysia.

“We are targeting 30 per cent of courses offered by public universities in Malaysia to be delivered via an online platform by 2020, and the ministry will put aside finances to encourage this initiative under the 11th Malaysia Plan ( 2016-2020),” he said. — Bernama