MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are online courses offered for free without any participation limit or formal entry requirement. The courses offer interaction, feedback and assessment (via automated quizzes or peers). In the past, they did not offer official credentials/credits however more recently, some MOOCs have begun to offer a certificate for a fee.
Credit: Dave Cormier
MOOCs and Open Education Resources (OERs)
Although they are often associated with each other, MOOCs and OERs are not the same thing. OERs are providers of course materials allowing for the possibility of use, distribution and reuse to incorporate or modify as needed. They are offered under Creative Commons licenses. Resources available for use include Open Course Ware (OCW) which is a free and open digital publication of university-level educational materials such as OCW Consortium started by MIT in 2001. There are also OCWs that offer resources for K-12 level of education such as Open School BC and OER Commons. In contrast, MOOCs are a full or mini-course, that are open to all and are mainly free but in most cases their contents are not released with an open license and therefore are not interchangeable in any way. It is important to note that OERs may be used in traditional learning environments however MOOCs and OCWs are a form of online based distance learning. cMOOCs vs xMOOCs While there are a wide variety of MOOCs covering a plethora of topics they can generally be divided into two categories: cMOOCs and xMOOCs. These two terms were coined by Stephen Downes one of the cocreators of the first MOOC to be offered on the web in 2008. This first MOOC falls under the category of cMOOC, which is based on the learning theory of Connectivism which accentuates the power of networking with others, gleaning from diverse opinions, and focusing on end-goals as the foundation of learning. George Siemens, the other cocreator of the first MOOC, mentions that cMOOCs are “based on the idea that learning happens within a network, where learners use digital platforms such as blogs, wikis, social media platforms to make connections with content, learning communities and other learners to create and construct knowledge.” (2012) In cMOOCs participants are learners and teachers who share their knowledge with one another, where the content is continually generated by the online community and shared openly with others and thus there is no formal curriculum. The emergence of xMOOCs came shortly afterward when in 2011 the University of Stanford offered a course on Artificial Intelligence as an OER which ended up with approximately 160,000 registered students. xMOOCs are structured based on a more traditional classroom structure, focused on the transmission of information, rather than creation of content by the community of students. They offer a combination of high quality content delivery, with quizzes, tests, or other computer-marked assessments and automation of all key transactions between participants and the learning platform. Direct interaction between the instructor and individual participants is almost non-existent. The success of Stanford’s MOOC prompted several top universities such as Harvard and MIT to begin to offer their own version of the MOOC. In 2012, Harvard and MIT founded edX, a MOOC platform. Other MOOC platforms include Coursera, developed by Stanford University, Udacity and FutureLearn. Although the xMOOC is the most common MOOC model, several versions of the MOOC have emerged, and can be referenced on the infographic on this page. In addition, the UBC Faculty of Education offers MOOCs which can be found here. |
Benefits of MOOCs
Challenges of MOOCs
Your next step is to proceed to Activity #1 to find MOOC resources and share them with us via Twitter. |