A massive open online course (MOOC ) or an open online course is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the Web. In addition to traditional course materials, such as filmed lectures, readings, and problem sets, many MOOCs provide interactive courses with user forums or social media discussions to support community interactions among students, professors, and teaching assistants (TAs), as well as immediate feedback to quick quizzes and assignments. MOOCs are a widely researched development in distance education, first introduced in 2008,Siemens, G. (2013). Massive open online courses: Innovation in education. In McGreal, R., Kinuthia W., & Marshall S. (Eds), Open educational resources: Innovation, research and practice (pp. 5–16). Vancouver: Commonwealth of Learning and Athabasca University. that emerged as a popular mode of learning in 2012.
Early MOOCs (cMOOCs: Connectivist MOOCs) often emphasized open-access features, such as open licensing of content, structure and learning goals, to promote the reuse and remixing of resources. Some later MOOCs (xMOOCs: extended MOOCs) use closed licenses for their course materials while maintaining free access for students.Wiley, David. "The MOOC Misnomer ". July 2012P. Adamopoulos, "What Makes a Great MOOC? An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Student Retention in Online Courses", ICIS 2013 Proceedings (2013) pp. 1–21 in AIS Electronic Library (AISeL) .
History
Precursors
Before the Digital Age, distance learning appeared in the form of correspondence courses in the 1890s–1920s and later radio and television broadcast of courses and early forms of e-learning. Typically fewer than five percent of the students would complete a course. For example the Stanford Honors Cooperative Program, established in 1954, eventually offered video classes on-site at companies, at night, leading to a fully accredited Master's degree. This program was controversial because the companies paid double the normal tuition paid by full-time students. The 2000s saw changes in online, or e-learning and distance education, with increasing online presence, open learning opportunities, and the development of MOOCs. By 2010 audiences for the most popular college courses such as "Justice" with Michael J. Sandel and "Human Anatomy" with Marian Diamond were reaching millions.
Early approaches
The first MOOCs emerged from the open educational resources (OER) movement, which was sparked by MIT OpenCourseWare project. The OER movement was motivated from work by researchers who pointed out that class size and learning outcomes had no established connection. Here, Daniel Barwick's work is the most often-cited example.
Within the OER movement, the Wikiversity was founded in 2006 and the first open course on the platform was organised in 2007. A ten-week course with more than 70 students was used to test the idea of making Wikiversity an open and free platform for education in the tradition of Scandinavian free adult education, Folk High School and the free school movement. The term MOOC was coined in 2008 by Dave Cormier of Thompson Rivers University in response to a course called Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (also known as CCK08). CCK08, which was led by George Siemens of Athabasca University and Stephen Downes of the National Research Council, consisted of 25 tuition-paying students in Extended Education at the University of Manitoba, as well as over 2200 online students from the general public who paid nothing. All course content was available through RSS feeds, and online students could participate through collaborative tools, including blog posts, threaded discussions in Moodle, and Second Life meetings. Stephen Downes considers these so-called cMOOCs to be more "creative and dynamic" than the current xMOOCs, which he believes "resemble television shows or digital textbooks".
Other cMOOCs were then developed; for example, Jim Groom from The University of Mary Washington and Michael Branson Smith of York College, City University of New York hosted MOOCs through several universities starting with 2011's 'Digital Storytelling' (ds106) MOOC. MOOCs from private, non-profit institutions emphasized prominent faculty members and expanded existing distance learning offerings (e.g., podcasts) into free and open online courses.The College of St. Scholastica, "Massive Open Online Courses ", (2012)
Alongside the development of these open courses, other E-learning platforms emerged – such as Khan Academy, Peer-to-Peer University (P2PU), Udemy, and Alison – which are viewed as similar to MOOCs and work outside the university system or emphasize individual self-paced lessons.Yuan, Li, and Stephen Powell. MOOCs and Open Education: Implications for Higher Education White Paper . University of Bolton: CETIS, 2013. pp. 7–8.
cMOOCs and xMOOCs
As MOOCs developed with time, multiple conceptions of the platform seem to have emerged. Mostly two different types can be differentiated: those that emphasize a connectivist philosophy, and those that resemble more traditional courses. To distinguish the two, several early adopters of the platform proposed the terms "cMOOC" and "xMOOC".
cMOOCs are based on principles from connectivist pedagogy indicating that material should be aggregated (rather than pre-selected), remixable, re-purposable, and feeding forward (i.e. evolving materials should be targeted at future learning).Downes, Stephen "'Connectivism' and Connective Knowledge" , Huffpost Education, 5 January 2011, accessed 27 July 2011.Kop, Rita "The challenges to connectivist learning on open online networks: Learning experiences during a massive open online course" , International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Volume 12, Number 3, 2011, accessed 22 November 2011.Bell, Frances "Connectivism: Its Place in Theory-Informed Research and Innovation in Technology-Enabled Learning" , International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Volume 12, Number 3, 2011, accessed 31 July 2011.Downes, Stephen. "Learning networks and connective knowledge". , Instructional Technology Forum, 2006, accessed 31 July 2011. cMOOC instructional design approaches attempt to connect learners to each other to answer questions or collaborate on joint projects. This may include emphasizing collaborative development of the MOOC.. Andrew Ravenscroft of the London Metropolitan University claimed that connectivist MOOCs better support collaborative dialogue and knowledge building.Andrew Ravenscroft. "Dialogue and Connectivism: A New Approach to Understanding and Promoting Dialogue-Rich Networked Learning" . International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Vol. 12(3). March 2011, Learning Technology Research Institute (LTRI), London Metropolitan University, UK.S. F. John Mak, R. Williams, and J. Mackness, "Blogs and Forums as Communication and Learning Tools in a MOOC" , Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Networked Learning (2010).
xMOOCs have a much more traditional course structure. They are characterized by a specified aim of completing the course obtaining certain knowledge certification of the subject matter. They are presented typically with a clearly specified syllabus of recorded lectures and self-test problems. However, some providers require paid subscriptions for acquiring graded materials and certificates. They employ elements of the original MOOC, but are, in some effect, branded IT platforms that offer content distribution partnerships to institutions. The instructor is the expert provider of knowledge, and student interactions are usually limited to asking for assistance and advising each other on difficult points.
Equity and access Access to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) remains uneven across global populations, affecting individuals such as those with limited literacy and those residing in rural or economically disadvantaged regions. Prototypes for audio-based MOOCs have been created to allow those with limited literacy to use MOOCs.
Emergence of MOOC providers
Since the 2010s, the industry has an unusual structure, consisting of linked groups including MOOC providers, the larger non-profit sector, universities, related companies and venture capitalists. The Chronicle of Higher Education lists the major providers as the non-profits Khan Academy and edX, and the for-profits Udacity and Coursera.
The larger non-profit organizations include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the American Council on Education. University pioneers include Stanford, Harvard, MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, Caltech, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of California at Berkeley, and San Jose State University. Related companies investing in MOOCs include Google and educational publisher Pearson PLC. Venture capitalists include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, New Enterprise Associates and Andreessen Horowitz.
In the fall of 2011, Stanford University launched three courses. The first of those courses was Introduction Into AI, launched by Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig. Enrollment quickly reached 160,000 students. The announcement was followed within weeks by the launch of two more MOOCs, by Andrew Ng and Jennifer Widom. Following the publicity and high enrollment numbers of these courses, Thrun started a company he named Udacity and Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng launched Coursera.
In January 2013, Udacity launched its first MOOCs-for-credit, in collaboration with San Jose State University. In May 2013, the company announced the first entirely MOOC-based master's degree, a collaboration between Udacity, AT&T and the Georgia Institute of Technology, costing $7,000, a fraction of its normal tuition.
Concerned about the commercialization of online education, in 2012 MIT created the not-for-profit MITx. The inaugural course, 6.002x, launched in March 2012. Harvard joined the group, renamed edX, that spring, and University of California, Berkeley joined in the summer. The initiative then added the University of Texas System, Wellesley College and Georgetown University.
In September 2013, edX announced a partnership with Google to develop MOOC.org, a site for non-xConsortium groups to build and host courses. Google will work on the core platform development with edX partners. In addition, Google and edX will collaborate on research into how students learn and how technology can transform learning and teaching. MOOC.org will adopt Google's infrastructure. The Chinese Tsinghua University MOOC platform XuetangX.com (launched Oct. 2013) uses the Open edX platform.
Before 2013, each MOOC tended to develop its own delivery platform. EdX in April 2013 joined with Stanford University, which previously had its own platform called Class2Go, to work on XBlock SDK, a joint open-source platform. It is available to the public under the AGPL open source license, which requires that all improvements to the platform be publicly posted and made available under the same license. Stanford Vice Provost John Mitchell said that the goal was to provide the "Linux of online learning". This is unlike companies such as Coursera that have developed their own platform.
By November 2013, edX offered 94 courses from 29 institutions around the world. During its first 13 months of operation (ending March 2013), Coursera offered about 325 courses, with 30% in the sciences, 28% in arts and humanities, 23% in information technology, 13% in business and 6% in mathematics. Udacity offered 26 courses. The number of courses offered has since increased dramatically: As of January 2016, edx offers 820 courses, Coursera offers 1580 courses and Udacity offers more than 120 courses. According to FutureLearn, the British Council's Understanding IELTS: Techniques for English Language Tests has an enrollment of over 440,000 students.
Notable providers