article thumbnail

MOOCs Find Their Audience: Professional Learners and Universities

Edsurge

The media started calling this space MOOCs or Massive Open Online Courses, a term coopted from a 2008 experiment. The narrative in early days of MOOC space was around disruption of universities. Not all MOOC providers shared this narrative, but this was the one that the media stuck with it.

MOOC 142
article thumbnail

What If Free Online Courses Weren’t Inside 'Walled Gardens'?

Edsurge

Large-scale online courses called MOOCs can get millions of registered users over time. The problem, he argues, is that providers of MOOCs, including Coursera and edX, require registration to get to the materials. Downes has a special relationship to MOOCs. Their course inspired both the term “MOOCs” and a whole new industry.

Course 172
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Online Learning's 'Greatest Hits'

Edsurge

MOOCs Recent virtual upstarts, MOOCs—massive open online courses—catapulted onto the global learning stage when Stanford University computer scientists Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig in 2011 came upon the bright idea of streaming their robotics lectures over the Internet. The term MOOC was coined by others in 2008.)

article thumbnail

14 Examples Of Innovation In Higher Education

TeachThought - Learn better.

MOOCs are great ideas, but assessment and feedback loops and certification are among the many issues holding them back. Comparing an unsupported MOOC from 2008 to an in-person college experience isn’t apples to apples. Open Curriculum. And anymore, they end being the punchline of edtech jokes, somehow.

Examples 143
article thumbnail

EdSurge HigherEd Year in Review: Our Top Higher Education Stories of 2018

Edsurge

While not quite the “Year of the MOOC,” 2018 saw a resurgence in interest around the ways these massive open online courses are delivering free (and more often these days, not free) online education around the world, and how these providers are increasingly turning to traditional institutions of learning. Without a University Involved.).

MOOC 129
article thumbnail

?Readers’ Roundup: EdSurge HigherEd’s Top 10 Articles of 2017

Edsurge

A Starter Kit For Instructional Designers When EdSurge columnist Amy Ahearn graduated from college in 2008, she had never heard of instructional design—let alone anticipate that she would soon have a career in it. Microcredentials, and controversial moves and pivots by edtech companies hoping to disrupt the higher education landscape.

Coursera 116
article thumbnail

Higher education technology predictions for 2014

Mark Smithers

Some new services and platforms will emerge to cater for different forms of learning, MOOCs will evolve and improve and open badges will be hot. The MOOC backlash. Of course I have to start with MOOCs. The MOOC backlash started in earnest in 2013. MOOC providers will keep on refining them. Introduction.

MOOC 89