On MOOCs

On MOOCs

MOOC represents Massive Open Online Courses, it was coined by Dave Cormier from the University of Prince Edward Island in 2008. Today, most MOOCs share the following characteristics:

1.       They can either be massive with a few hundred to several thousand students in a course simultaneously.

2.       Interactions through blogs, portfolios, websites, social networking sites and more.

3.       Course content is not found in only one place but can be found all over the web

4.       Course participants are distributed all over the world.

5.       Most MOOCs are free but there may be a fee of for accreditation programs.

6.       Participants and Instructors aggregate, remix, and repurpose the content

7.       The courses do not have specific requirements but participants must stay up to date with rough schedules

In 2011 Stanford University offered an Artificial Intelligence course online. 160,000 registered students from 190 countries. 23,000 completed the course, 248 of those (not Stanford students) earned 100% on the score.  

MOOCs are become popular because the online experience improves as technology evolves, the high cost of education causes people to look for cheaper forms of education, and MOOC allows participants to build professional and and personal skills sets in their own time. 

Some famous MOOCs include Coursera, edx, udemy, and KhanAcademy.