Appears in: INTED2014 Proceedings
Pages: 1449-1458
Publication year: 2014
ISBN: 978-84-616-8412-0
ISSN: 2340-1079
Conference: 8th International Technology, Education and Development Conference 
Dates: 10-12 March, 2014
Location: Valencia, España

Cite

Sanchez-Gordon, Sandra; Luján-Mora, Sergio, MOOCs Gone Wild, Proceedings of 8th International Technology, Education and Development Conference  INTED 2014, pp. 1449-1458, Valencia (Spain), 10-14 March, 2014.

Abstract

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have been around since 2008, when 2,300 students took part in a course called “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge” organized by University of Manitoba (Canada). The year 2012 was widely recognized as “The year of the MOOC”, because several MOOC initiatives gained a world-wide popularity. Nowadays, many experts consider MOOCs a “revolution in education”. However, other experts think is too soon to make such a claim since MOOCs still have to prove they are here to stay.

With the spread of MOOCs, different providers have appeared, such as Coursera, Udacity and EdX. In addition, some popular LMS (Learning Management Systems), such as Moodle or Sakai, have also been used to provide MOOCs. Besides, a new breed of LMS has appeared in recent months with the aim of providing tools to create MOOCs: OpenMOOC and Google CourseBuilder being two of them.

The growing interest of MOOCs has led to the emergence of different forms of use. In some cases, such as xMOOCs, the initial concept has been distorted. In other cases, such as SPOCs (Small Private Online Courses), it has become possible to use MOOCs in contexts alternatives to which they were originally created. For example, MOOCs have been used at some universities as creditable courses. And some teachers are using MOOCs as support for their lectures by applying the “flipped classroom” method.

The aim of this paper is to clarify the enormous confusion that currently exists around the MOOCs. On one hand, in this paper we categorize the different MOOCs that currently exist. On the other hand, we present a classification of MOOCs from different perspectives: content, access, use, etc. Finally, we highlight some features that should be considered in the classification of MOOCs, such as accessibility and language barriers.

Keywords

MOOC, cMOOC, xMOOC, BOOC, COOC, DOCC, MOOR, POOC, SMOC, SPOC

References

[1]   Pence, H.  (2012). When Will College Truly Leave the Building: If MOOCs are the Answer, What   is the Question? Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 41(1), pp. 25-33.

[2]   Siemens, G. (2012). What is the theory that underpins our moocs? [Online] Available:  http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2012/06/03/what-is-the-theory-that-underpins-our-moocs/

[3]   Pappano, L. (2012). The Year of the MOOC. The New York Times. [Online] Available: http://goo.gl/oXI5KL

[4]   Siemens, G. (2012). MOOCs are really a platform. [Online] Available: http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2012/07/25/moocs-are-really-a-platform/

[5]   Class Central. (2014). Free Online Education. [Online] Available: https://www.class-central.com/

[6]   ICEF Monitor. (2013. Are we already entering a post MOOC era? [Online] Available: http://monitor.icef.com/2013/11/are-we-already-entering-a-post-mooc-era/

[7]   Siemens, G. (2013). Neoliberalism and MOOCs: Amplifying nonsense. Elearnspace. [Online] Available: http://goo.gl/Pu8QLH

[8]   Rivard, R. (2013). Beyond MOOC Hype. Inside Higher Ed. [Online] Available:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/07/09/higher-ed-leaders-urge-slow-down-mooc-train

[9]   Reich, J. (2013). Is a MOOC a Textbook or a Course? Education Week. [Online] Available: http://goo.gl/b3QMQ1

[10] Gaebel, M. (2013). MOOCs: Massive Open Online Courses. European University Association Occasional Papers.

[11] Parr, C. (2013). MOOC makes Oxford online dictionary. Times Higher Education. [Online] Available: http://goo.gl/i8SrQj

[12] Jordan, K. (2013). MOOC completion rates: The data. [Online] Available: http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html

[13] Sanchez-Gordon, S., Luján-Mora, S. (2013). Accessibility considerations of massive online open courses as creditable courses in engineering programs. International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation ICERI 2013. IATED Digital Library, pp.853-5862

[14] Clancy, D. (2013). We are joining the Open edX platforms. [Online] Available:
http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2013/09/we-are-joining-open-edx-platform.html

[15] Daniel, J. (2012). Making sense of MOOCs: Musings in a maze of myth, paradox and possibility. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2013(3)

[16] Morrison, D. (2013). The Ultimate Student Guide to xMOOCs and cMOOCs. MOOC News and Reviews. [Online] Available: http://goo.gl/LGe75T

[17] Reich, J. (2012). Summarizing All MOOCs in One Slide: Market, Open and Dewey. [Online] Available: http://goo.gl/R8qNnW

[18] Lane, L. (2012). Three Kinds of MOOCs. Lisa’s Teaching Blog. [Online] Available: http://lisahistory.net/wordpress/2012/08/three-kinds-of-moocs/

[19] Clark, D. (2013). MOOCs: taxonomy of 8 types of MOOC. [Online] Available: http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/2013/04/moocs-taxonomy-of-8-types-of-mooc.html

[20] Hickey, D. (2014). Brief History of the BOOC, Digital Badges, and Educational Assessment. [Online] Available: http://www.indiana.edu/~booc/

[21] Comrie, C. (2013). Technology in education new battle lines. [Online] Available:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/technology-in-education-new-battle-lines-19-feb-2013

[22] Jaschik, S. (2013). Feminist Anti-MOOC. Inside Higher ED. [Online] Available: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/19/feminist-professors-create-alternative-moocs

[23] Hosler, A. (2014). The MOOC evolves into the MOOR. Emerging Ed Tech. [Online]  Available:
http://goo.gl/65hzAn

[24] Zapata-Ríos, M. (2013). POOC. [Online]  Available:
http://redesabiertas.blogspot.com/2013/07/pooc.html

[25] Straumsheim, C. (2013). Don’t call it a MOOC. Inside Higher ED. [Online] Available:
href=»http://goo.gl/WWbmkX

[26] Sangrá, A. (2013). Do you prefer a MOOC or an SPOC? [Online] Available:
http://blogs.elpais.com/traspasando-la-linea/2013/10/prefieres-un-mooc-o-un-spoc.html

[27] Coughlan, S. (2013). Harvard plans to boldly go with SPOCS. BBC News. [Online] Available:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24166247

[28] Koller, D. (2012). What we’re learning from online education. TEDGlobal 2012, June 26.  [Online] Available:
http://www.ted.com/talks/daphne_koller_what_we_re_learning_from_online_education.html

[29] Khanna, R. (2013). Democratization of access to Higher Education through MOOCs. TEDxLivermore, June 8. [Online] Available:
http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Democratization-of-access-to-Hi

[30] Fowler, G. (2013). Most MOOC Users Well-Educated, Study Finds. The Wall Street Journal, November 20. [Online] Available:
http://goo.gl/XnrnL7

[31] Ozer, M. (2013). MOOC students are highly educated, job-oriented. The Daily Pennsylvanian. [Online] Available:
http://goo.gl/N33Q6L

[32] The World Bank (2013). World Development Indicators: Internet users. [Online] Available:
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.P2

[33] International Telecommunication Union (2013). World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators database 2013 (17th Edition). [Online] Available:
http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/publications/wtid.aspx

[34]  Anastasopoulos, N., Baer, A.M. (2013). MOOCs: When Opening Doors to Education, Institutions Must Ensure that People with Disabilities Have Equal Access. The New England Journal of Higher Education, July 22. [Online] Available: http://goo.gl/IFJOAJ