A massive open online course (MOOC) is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web. In addition to traditional course materials such as videos, readings and problem sets, MOOCs provide interactive user forums that help build a community for the students, professors, and teaching assistants. MOOCs are a recent development in distance education, and although early MOOCs often emphasized open access features (such as open licensing of content, open structure and connectivism to promote the reuse and remixing of resources), some newer MOOCs use closed licenses for their course materials, while maintaining free access for students.
The first MOOCs emerged from the open educational resources (OER) movement. Early MOOCs did not rely on posted resources, learning management systems and structures that mix the learning management system with more open web resources. MOOCs from private, non-profit institutions emphasized prominent faculty members and expanded existing distance learning offerings (such as podcasts) into free and open online courses.
Because of massive enrollments, MOOCs require instructional designs that can facilitate large-scale feedback and interaction. This typically involves use of peer-review, group collaboration, and automated feedback on objective, online assessments. These assessments can take the form of multiple choice questions, "drag-and-drop" tasks, and fill-in-the-blank responses. Some MOOCs attempt to connect learners to each other to answer questions, hold discussions, or collaborate on joint projects. For example, many universities in the United States have implemented the Blackboard site, where students and instructors can engage in discussion, manage assignments, and connect outside the classroom. Other MOOCs strongly encourage or require students to enroll in the online course with a parter or group. Furthermore, an emerging trend in MOOCs is the use of nontraditional teaching materials such as graphic novels, videos, interactive infographics, and other media in order to improve knowledge retention.
Critiques/Effects on Education
Dennis Yang, President of MOOC provider Udemy has suggested that MOOCs are in the midst of a hype cycle, with expectations undergoing a wild swing as many universities scramble to join in the "next big thing. " More established online education service providers such as Blackboard Inc, have also echoed this sentiment. As a result, dozens of universities in Canada, Mexico, Europe and Asia have announced partnerships with the large American MOOC providers, and by early 2013, questions had emerged about whether academia was "MOOC'd out."
There are many concerns that MOOCs have serious implications for traditional higher education models, especially as cost-cutting pressures threaten to hamstring the higher education industry. These concerns about MOOCs include:
- Participants must have digital literacy in order to engage in a massive online open course
- Participants must self-regulate and set their own goals
- There are numerous potential difficulties with massive courses that span country or state borders (such as problems of relevancy and knowledge transfer)
- They do not address the need for territory-specific study of locally relevant issues and needs
- Possible negative effects on the structure of higher education, specifically, the absence of face-to-face pedagogy
MOCC Poster
Poster, entitled "MOOC, every letter is negotiable," exploring the meaning of the words "Massive Open Online Course"