Sandra Sanchez-Gordon Department of Informatics and Computer Science National Polytechnic School (Ecuador) Sergio Luján-Mora Department of Software and Computing Systems University of Alicante (Spain)

August ,300 participants

Fall ,000 participants

February 2012 A bit of history (3)

March ,000 participants

April 2012 A bit of history (5)

May 2012 A bit of history (6)

May 2012 – 314,000 participants A bit of history (7)

2013 A bit of history (8)

2013 A bit of history (9)

2013 A bit of history (10)

By the end of 2013:  Coursera leads the market with 5 million users from 190 countries and 566 courses offered in 12 different languages by 107 educational partners.  edX has 1.65 million users from 255 countries and territories and 125 courses offered by 30 partners.  Udacity has 1.8 million users from 190 countries and 33 courses offered by 16 partners

MOOC Poster by Mathieu Plourde, licensed CC-BY on Flickr

 The significant potential of MOOCs lies in the fact that they have shown there are millions of people around the world, of all ages and conditions, eager to learn.  The aspiration of MOOCs is to achieve large-scale participation and open access via the Internet to anyone.  MOOCs offer great opportunities to improve the quality of life of many people by enabling lifelong learning and inclusion in learning communities.

 cMOOC stands for connectivity or collectivist MOOC. These MOOCs put emphasis on students constructing their knowledge, creativity, autonomy and social and collaborative learning.  xMOOC stands for eXtended MOOC and focuses on scalability. These MOOCs are offered through commercial or semi- commercial platforms, such as Coursera, edX and Udacity. These MOOCs are based in a traditional university teaching.

 Transfer MOOCs, where existing courses are transferred to a MOOC style.  Made MOOCs, which are more innovative, making effective use of video and interactive material and are more quality driven.  Synch MOOCs, with fixed start and end date.  Asynch MOOCs, without fixed dates.

 Adaptive MOOCs, which provide personalised learning experiences.  Group MOOCs, where the focus is on collaboration in small groups.  Connectivist MOOCs, where the emphasis is on connection across a network of peers.  Mini MOOCS, which are much smaller than the traditional massive MOOCs.

 BOOC. Big Open Online Course.  COOC. Community Open Online Course.  DOCC. Distributed Online Collaborative Course.  MOOR. Massive Open Online Research.  POOC. Personalized Open Online Course.  SMOC. Synchronous Massive Online Course.  SPOC. Self-Paced Online Course.  SPOC. Small Private Online Course

 Internet barrier. Sometimes it is forgotten, but only around one third of the total population of the world has access to the Internet.  Cost barrier. From the students’ point of view, MOOCs are drifting towards paid courses in the form of SPOCS. From the educational institutions’ point of view, creating a MOOC is getting more expensive because quality keeps getting higher.

 Language barrier. The majority of MOOCs are only offered in English. Students with other native languages can have difficulties related to their proficiency in English: for example, non-native speakers read at slower speed than native speakers; the speed difference leads to information overload and cognitive issues

 Web accessibility barrier. MOOCs may make access to education easier for students with certain disabilities, such as motor impairment, but their format may be inaccessible to students who have vision or hearing impairment.

The MOOC phenomena will continue evolving. As in Darwin's natural selection of species, only the stronger types of MOOC will survive. By stronger, we mean those that accomplish the goal to provide higher education to people with a financial sustainable model.

Sandra Sanchez-Gordon Sergio Luján-Mora