Time-to-Adoption: Four to Five Year
Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs)
Coined in 2008 by Stephen Downes and George Siemens, massively open online courses (MOOCs)
are conceptualised as the evolution of networked learning. MOOCs have not yet achieved their
envisioned potential, but early experiments are promising. The essence of a MOOC is that it is a
web course that people can take from anywhere across the world, with potentially thousands of
participants. The basis of each MOOC is an expansive and diverse set of content, contributed by a
variety of experts, educators, and instructors in a specific field, and then aggregated into a central
repository, such as a web site. What makes this content set especially unique is that it is “remixed” -
- the materials are not necessarily designed to go together but become associated with each other
through the MOOC. A key component of the original vision is that all course materials and the
course itself are open source and free — with the door left open for a fee if a participant taking the
course wishes university credit be transcripted for the work. Interest in MOOCs has evolved at an
unprecedented pace, fueled by high profile entrants like Coursera, Udacity, and MITx. In these
examples, the notion has shifted away from open content or even open access, to an
interpretation in which “open” equates to “no charge.” The pace of development in the MOOC
space is so high that it is likely that a number of alternative models will emerge over the coming
year. Ultimately, the models that attract the highest numbers of participants are gaining the most
attention, but many challenges remain to be resolved in supporting learning at scale.