ABSTRACT
Despite the many concerns regarding their underlying business model, MOOCs continue to grow and are being adopted worldwide; in effect, they have become accepted as the new practice of opening access to quality education. Every day there are new MOOCs and MOOC-like or MOOC-inspired online courses being developed and offered by many educational institutions and organizations in all parts of the world, including in Indonesia. Many initiatives, mostly initiated by individual institutions, have also endorsed and then jumped on to the MOOC bandwagon. The first MOOC in Indonesia was offered by a private university known as the Ciputra University in 2013, followed by Universitas Terbuka in 2014. Even though several universities and organizations such as SEAMEO-SEAMOLEC (South East Asian Ministry of Education Organization Regional Center for Open Learning), IndonesiaX, and SPADA have followed the initiative, the road for Indonesia to fully take advantage of ample MOOC resources is still a long way off. According to Belawati, Indonesia needs a systematic campaign and an awareness-raising effort to make MOOCs beneficial to the greater part of Indonesian society. As someone who initially started working at the UT in 1985 just after its inception and has twice been its rector, Dr. Belawati has a highly unique lens in which to view the emergence of MOOCs and open education in her country.
