Seven things we have learned about MOOCs
November 11th, 2012 by Graham Attwell
With the explosion of interest in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), both in numbers of courses and students, and in press reporting on the rise of MOOCs, it is worth thinking about the significance of all this. Here is a short version of five things that we have learned – a longer version (possibly) to follow.
- There is a huge pent up demand for education. MOOCs provide free and flexible access tot hose who could not previously take part in education. That includes not only from poorer countries with a limited education infrastructure but also from rich countries. And whilst some of the demand my be due to people wishing to improve their qualification, for many others the main motivation is personal interest.
- After a long period when Technology Enhanced Learning was seen as a supplement to traditional systems or as only for more technologically confident learners, Technology Enhanced Learning is now part of the mainstream and for many learners may be the mode or context of learning of choice.
- Education is now a global industry. National borders are no longer a barrier to participation in on-line courses and universities are being forced into international alliances to deliver courses to a global student body. At the same time, investors see Technology Enhanced Learning as an opportunity to develop new markets and are pumping money in accordingly.
- There does not seem to be any confidence about what the future financial market is for MOOCs. Some institutional managers see it as an way of recruiting more paying students to their university, others talk of a future market in selling accreditation.
- The new so called X-MOOCs such as Udacity or Coursera offer little in terms of new or radical pedagogies. Instead they rely on relatively well established approaches to online learning. However, they may reflect the growing experience in developing online courses and the reduced cost and ease of production of videos and, for students, the ease of access through ubiquitous connectivity.
- MOOCs are disruptive to the traditional university model. However such disruption may be more from globalisation and the financial crisis than from the introduction of new technologies per se.
- Innovation comes from outside the institutions. Despite being ignored in the popular press, MOOCs were developed and pioneered by people such as Stephen Downes, George Siemens and Dave Cormier (See Stephen Downes’ MOOC blog for more). The so called c (connectivist) MOOCs were far more innovative in pedagogic approaches but the idea was taken over and adapted by the mainstream institutions once they had proved their viability and attraction.
Please follow and like us:
Editing note – c (constructivist) MOOCs was changed to c (coonectivist) MOOCs. Thanks to @AlisonSeaman
Hi Graham,
Me and João Mattar from are doing the 1st pt MOOC. As you say, “Innovation comes from outside the institutions”, just what we are doing.
It’s about Distance Education and I hope you can take a look.
I’m really curious on how can we join cMOOCs and PLEs. Are MOOCs the first step to help people to understand the meaning of PLE or the way, only the people who understand the meaning of managing a PLE can taking part in a cMOOC?
All the best,
Paulo
Been using MOOCs for a while now and my experience is that it is a great source to supplement traditional classes and brush up on topics and concepts you learned a while back. Here are my thoughts
http://datagrad.blogspot.com/2012/11/using-moocs-while-in-grad-school.html