MOOCs - Massive Open Online Courses

Have you ever thought about studying abroad, joining a course offered by a prestigious university like Harvard, MIT or Yale (just to mention a few from a really long list) but you feel too busy or too old, or simply you cannot afford it? Well, here is the answer to your problem. The latest trend in education is called MOOC. Education is just a click away!

Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is an online course aiming at large-scale 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 often use open educational resources. 

Are you looking for a massive open online course? In this case you should have a look at the following addresses.

https://www.coursera.org/

https://www.edx.org/
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/upcoming

https://www.udacity.com/

http://www.mooc-list.com/

http://www.teachthought.com/learning/50-top-sources-of-free-elearning-courses/

Note, however, that Udacity differs from Coursera and edX in that it does not have a calendar-based schedule (asynchronous); students may start a course at any time. While some MOOCs such as Coursera or edX present lectures online, typical to those of traditional classrooms, others such as Udacity offer interactive lessons with activities, quizzes and exercises interspersed between short videos and talks.

All these organisations profess to provide world-class education to everyone, everywhere. And from my own personal experience, being an edX/Harvard student, I admit that it is worth every minute (in my case long hours) spent on it, since it is an excellent way to learn. Of course, as everything else, MOOCs have come in for a lot of criticism as well. If you feel sceptical about joining one of the courses, perhaps you could have a look at the following article from the NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/opinion/sunday/grading-the-mooc-university.html?pagewanted=all

Or maybe you could benefit from Jonathan Haber’s experiment and experience of MOOC world.

http://degreeoffreedom.org/

Whatever your opinion, such courses are an excellent way to practice your language skills and communicate with people all around the world, within an academic context. What do you think? Would you give it a try?

Please, let us know about your own experience as a MOOC student.