What Is A MOOC?

Source: OnlineColleges (detail)

If your school is like ours, you might have a small percentage of teachers who have Twitter accounts and even fewer who actively use them either to lurk or participate.

Let’s face it, teachers are busy, a lot busier than most non-educators realize. So if you start talking about MOOCs changing the way “everyone” can learn, no doubt there will be plenty of colleagues who will ask, “What is a MOOC?”

MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Courses. They are rapidly growing in number. They are fed not only by the cost of higher education, but also by the variety of classes, the flexibility in schedule, and the notoriety of institutions that offer them for free. MIT and Harvard partnered to create edX. Coursera is another that offers free online courses, which several top universities partnered together to create. Other big names in the MOOC world are Udemy, Udacity and Khan Academy.

Source: OnlineColleges (detail)

The World of Massive Open Online Courses infographic from OnlineColleges provides a detailed breakdown of a MOOC, including their success, popularity, benefits, and issues. In addition, we liked this video we recently found that describes what a MOOC is using simple animation. It would be good to show at any faculty or professional development meeting.