What is a MOOC?

A MOOC is a way of providing online learning to anyone with an internet connection.  MOOCs have become the buzzword of 2012, with the aim of ‘democratising education’ (Daniel, 2012) The first course was pioneered by Stephen Downes and George Siemens in 2008 (Connectivism and Connective Knowledge) but it was in this last year, when MIT, Stanford and Harvard became leaders in the ‘globalisation of education’ that interest in the UK was generated (Educause, 2011). Standard features of  a MOOC include: No previous experience or other pre-requisites are laid down; there is no admission interview and no need to have ever studied online or even in Higher Education.  There is also no limit on attendance or class size. (Rodriguez, 2012).  Recent MOOCs have attracted thousands of students.  The Artificial Intelligence course (CS221), from Stanford University attracted 160,000 registered students.  The course was free and the students knew that they would not receive grades or credit (Rodriguez, 2012).

There are at present, two main approaches to the application of a MOOC.  Otherwise known as a cMOOC a constructivist approach to learning allows for initial instruction from the academic but essentially they are learner driven.  The other, more typical model is the xMOOC.  This is based on a behaviourist approach (Daniel, 2012) where there are instructions, videos and quizzes.  The latter is the most common and have been adopted here in the UK.   Institutions in the UK are also beginning to become interested in this model of opening up courses for the masses with an obvious benefit to recruit new students and to extend their reputations.  Edinburgh University, the Open University, University of London and others have signed up to deliver courses over the coming year.  HEI’s have recognised the potential of MOOCs to increase student numbers on campus based courses.