I think online educational material is here to stay, be it in MOOC form (like Coursera, and such like), in SPOC form (using LMS like Moodle or Claroline) or simply in e-learning, be they paid or free (as in Udemy and such like, or even simpe video tutorials that you can get on YouTube). Let's face facts: why would students at any given university attend the boring class of Prof X (who can't be bothered to create interesting and engaging learning tasks but prefers to lecture instead), if they can watch that of world-famous and world-acclaimed prof. Y (of Famous University) instead? The simple truth is they won't.

I believe that creating online material will soon be "officially" part of our teaching load. I believe universities will have somehow to find an economic model to account for that work. I believe there'll be more tutoring, more mentoring to improve the (very low) completion rate of most MOOCs. That too will have to be accounted for in the workloads of academic staff, or else, we'll have to task TAs with that (too).

I believe one day, there'll be an open standard for courses. Any university will be able to build online curricula by choosing modules from a common database of online courses, compliant with a common standard, on which any institution will offer material. Students will earn their degrees pretty much like players earn experience in a video game... little by little. Each "level" will grant credits, and the sum of those credits will grant a degree. This means, there won't be any start or end of semester. This means some students will earn a BSc in two years, and others in 3 years. This means, each person will have a unique studentID which will allow them to gain educational credit from any training institution, anywhere, anytime. This also means you'll have to register/book in-class sessions when you are ready for them (exams, or practical/experimental/Lab work), in a place near your home. This, of course, probably means that you'll have to pay for each module, or at least for the (in-presence ones), with all the risks involved in having competing academic institutions, in a globalized market.

To cut a long story short, we cannot "uninvent" the internet, the concepts of MOOCs or SPOCs. Paying a teacher to repeat the same thing each semester to a different audience does not make any sense. So online courses (or at least online lectures + quizzes) are here to stay.

I think MOOCs are here to stay but their Accreditation needs to be clearly articulated so that they can be comfortably accepted by both employers and educational institutions. The latter would determine the rate at which it grows in the future. See link to related articles.

Best regards,

Debra

https://www.researchgate.net/post/MOOC_Where_do_your_think_it_will_go

I think online educational material is here to stay, be it in MOOC form (like Coursera, and such like), in SPOC form (using LMS like Moodle or Claroline) or simply in e-learning, be they paid or free (as in Udemy and such like, or even simpe video tutorials that you can get on YouTube). Let's face facts: why would students at any given university attend the boring class of Prof X (who can't be bothered to create interesting and engaging learning tasks but prefers to lecture instead), if they can watch that of world-famous and world-acclaimed prof. Y (of Famous University) instead? The simple truth is they won't.

I believe that creating online material will soon be "officially" part of our teaching load. I believe universities will have somehow to find an economic model to account for that work. I believe there'll be more tutoring, more mentoring to improve the (very low) completion rate of most MOOCs. That too will have to be accounted for in the workloads of academic staff, or else, we'll have to task TAs with that (too).

I believe one day, there'll be an open standard for courses. Any university will be able to build online curricula by choosing modules from a common database of online courses, compliant with a common standard, on which any institution will offer material. Students will earn their degrees pretty much like players earn experience in a video game... little by little. Each "level" will grant credits, and the sum of those credits will grant a degree. This means, there won't be any start or end of semester. This means some students will earn a BSc in two years, and others in 3 years. This means, each person will have a unique studentID which will allow them to gain educational credit from any training institution, anywhere, anytime. This also means you'll have to register/book in-class sessions when you are ready for them (exams, or practical/experimental/Lab work), in a place near your home. This, of course, probably means that you'll have to pay for each module, or at least for the (in-presence ones), with all the risks involved in having competing academic institutions, in a globalized market.

To cut a long story short, we cannot "uninvent" the internet, the concepts of MOOCs or SPOCs. Paying a teacher to repeat the same thing each semester to a different audience does not make any sense. So online courses (or at least online lectures + quizzes) are here to stay.

We live in an era of lifelong learning and MOOCs cay play a role in both professional development and personal enrichment. 

My concern in all online classes, MOOCs and otherwise, is that there are STILL few "best practices" and that developers often start from scratch without institutional standards about how to structure online classes.  

In my opinion, the MOOCs have to solve three basic problems: their sustainability (or business model), the motivation of students (they typically have huge drop out rate) and the globalization issue (which labor market will benefit from the students achieving MOOCs goals?).

If you agree with this, try to find papers that consider Quality of Experience (QoE) and MOOCs. You might start with

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Antonio_Bartolome/publication/267762782_Are_MOOC_Promising_Learning_Environments_(preprint_copy)/links/5459fff50cf2cf51648407d1.pdf

Article Are MOOC Promising Learning Environments? (preprint copy)

Thank you Harshvardhan Singh for your comment.

Can you elaborate the issue "Education perceived as a product"?

You also mentioned that "MOOCs have proved to be great recruitment tools in the corporate sector." Do you have any published paper about this point in specific?

Many thanks in advance.

The sky is really the limit where MOOCs are concerned.  This is a brilliant move than can positively affect people all over the globe regardless of their economic situation.   I am looking at how Libraries can aid with this since many of the persons involved with MOOCs do not have a library.

I think world globality and connectivity facilitate MOOC expansion in future degrees and masters, but what kind of MOOC? I believe, that it is neccesary the establishment of their structure and minimum requirements necessary to guarantee that is giving and how in a MOOC is having.

Hi Alaa,

First of all, it seems cecessary to precisely define the characteristics (parameters) of the MOOC concept since a high variation in the difinitioncan be found.

Another approach can be to look at organisations that have experience with MOOCs. Indeed, most organisations of open education or open universities chave interesting puklications that help to avoid to get lost in Google hyperspace. 

For teh European scene, EADTU is a valid organisation as a European Association of Distance Teaching Universities national associations across 25 nations. Its membership covers over 200 universities and around 3 million students.

The website is easily accessible and the list of publications contains withwhile information and repoerts.

Hi Alaa,

My apologies for sending a draft version of the answer some minutes ago. I touched unwillingly the 'sent' button too early.

First of all, it seems necessary to  define the characteristics (parameters) of the MOOC-concept since a high variation in the definition can be found. A definition helps to avoid overload in searching Google Scholar.

Another approach is to look at organisations that have experience with MOOCs. Indeed, most organisations of Open education or Open universities have interesting publications that pint to both conceptualistion and  development of MOOCs. 

In the European context,  EADTU (European Association of Distance Teaching Universities) is a valid organisation representing across 25 nations. Its membership covers over 200 universities and around 3 million students.

The website is easily accessible and  contains helpful information.

General: www.eadtu.eu/

Publications: http://www.eadtu.eu/home/publications

Impressive list of members: http://www.eadtu.eu/members/current-members

No predictions will be precise at this point. In the US its different model, in the EU - different. So there will be no one direction to look at. 

Hi Maka,

I agree that there are some differences between countries and continents. This will, however, not withold us from trying to build a suitable conceptual framework and to look at  very different contexts in which MOOCs are embedded. The future of MOOCs is dependent on both conceptual frameworks and realisations in educational contexts.

Good point. Conceptual frameworks, policy and sustainability

@ Harshvardhan Singh I agree that costs will be cut whenever e-learning is used. My worry is whether learning outcomes will drop. From my experience, without proper mentoring/tutoring, completion rates of online material are never over 15%.

That's what worries me: in the corporate world in particular, having made the material available is not sufficient... you do require the training to be effective. In a school/collegte, it is slightly different. Although low learning outcomes might impact the school's reputation, this would seem less of a concern in the short term.

Yes, high drop out rate is one the main issues in MOOC but who say that the participants were joining to complete the course. As I see so far, most of MOOC students were adults who intended to update or to use some MOOC content in their professions. Completing the course was not their intention at all.

In this case, should we consider this as an issue?

A work around solution here would be using Small Private Online Course (SPOC) but it , in my opinion, is just "work around". What do you think?

High dropout rates are not that big a catastrophy for MOOCs as they would be for a bricks-and-mortar university, and not always for the learners either. The learners are as we know often educated, but also often now working full time, have family duties and other priorities, and  most would never have begun an ordinary course with tuition fee, But they want to learn and MOOCs are a new possibility for them to try out and they seem to often come back and continue or try another course. Youth education on campus and life-long learning under complex time-place conditions are different.

This might contribute.

MOOCs are ways to advertise. I think they have worked well with attracting some students to our programs. I thought they would be a fad and go away, but they are hanging on. They take a lot of effort on the part of faculty, so the benefits should certainly be balanced with "costs."

Alaa,

I love SPOCs. I think they've got all the qualities. The glitz and flexibility of online courses, and yet the high level of engagement of in-class courses. Of course this can only be true IF AND ONLY IF there is a tutor for each group of students (max 30); IF the tutor monitors the students' work every week at least, and sends individual messages enquiring about the students' progress, then almost all will achieve completion (on my own experience).

I do not expect MOOCs to become a standard of online education, but rather see them as one of the many possibilities in online and blended learning. My guess is that a diverse set of new services will evolve; including such things as simple’ open educational content, to well-designed educational games, and many other blended forms of on-line and off-line learning.

This is partly based on an analysis of the user experience of most xMOOCs (see: https://koenvanturnhout.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/participation-in-the-mooc/), partly on our experiences in integrating MOOC's in our regular curriculum.

My 2 Cents.

Article Patterns for Using Top-level MOOCs in a Regular University

Hi! MOOCs (and all its connected abbreviations) are developing fast behind the label, and perhaps the label will soon be changed into something else than MOOC. I see it in its core as a globalization or rather "glonacalization" (Marginson & Rhoades 2002, explained in paper below) of education. Most universities now concentrate their research resources info fewer and fewer fields to reach some global excellence and ranking. In the same way, connected teaching also becomes specialized and globally relevant. We may witness a first round of market struggles and fights - like for example Stanford claim to have outstanding research on artificial intelligence, they now also have added the best course on the subject. It is a language of power and market shares, but also provides possibilities to take help of other universities in the local university and its teaching. people know anyway that Stanfords course is outstanding and that the local teachers cannot compete with so fresh expert stuff. But they can use it, for example to wrap courses and do labs, discussions and examination locally (not without problems though) - only one example. See this recently published paper, rush on to the theory part if you are not interested in the case described.

Article Using MOOCs at learning centers in Northern Sweden

Hi!

Certainly MOOCs didn´t become the disruptive innovation in Higher Ed nor the answer to democratizing education. Nevertheless, I have the feeling that MOOCs will continue to exist. Nevertheless, they will have to continue evolving to gain sustainability. 

Here some published research you might find useful for your work:

http://rd.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-25768-6_20

http://revistas.uned.es/index.php/educacionXX1/article/view/14808/13171

http://search.proquest.com/openview/420048f4a8f2fbb852f3262bebcf07bd/1?pq-origsite=gscholar

http://scholarworks.umb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=ciee

Greetings from Ecuador :)

Hi,,,

I can see here conflicting opinions about MOOC future:

• - fading phenomenon
• - marketing method
• - robust and evolving.
• - one option out many others
• - changing to something else

Nice to hear that diversity opinions and hope to hear more.

Dear Alaa,

I just would like to give you a very interesting paper on how to conduct a systematic literature review. it may help you:

B. A. Kitchenham. Guidelines for performing systematic literature reviews in software engineering. version 2.3. Technical Report EBSE-2007-01, Keele University and University of Durham, 2007

regards.

Nice study Sofiane, It will certainly help.

Thank you for sharing!!

Hello Alaa,

I have reviewed everyone's responses and would like to address two and then provide my own. Alcino Ferreira excellently expressed the value of MOOC compared to traditional courses. That was a powerful view point; this knowledge should be shared with institutions across the land (They are clearly NOT GETING IT). Harshvardhan Singh provided fair, comparison information that assists readers with grasping the true state of education.

The "issues...low perceived value compared to university degrees," and "education perceived as a product" doesn't truly illustrate issues with MOOC. What Singh provides with this expertly collected data is proof that societal thinking (often misunderstanding) poses a threat for humans whom thirst for quality, acquisition of knowledge. Generational reduction of education to "status" and "tradition persistently confines brilliant minds to the four walls of "prestigious" universities.

Limiting knowledge acquisition to "perception" of quality doesn't strengthen our higher education system. We have created a problem by attempting to place all oranges through square openings. It does not and will not create success. Attending a university doesn't guarantee a knowledge-rich environment, yet the public views a university degree as the "gold standard." Forcing oranges into square education creates, as Singh pointed out, a need for MOOC. The contradiction is suggesting MOOC provides low educational standards (per traditionalist thinking) while viewing MOOC as a bridge between educational and performance gaps. I believe that the information Singh provided is pure depiction of how society shuns what they believe will hurt their "bottom lines," yet privately utilizes those tools as a method to educate and strengthen professional roles. When reviewing the list, I grapple with one question: Should there be a gap in university education and the ability to perform expertly without MOOC?

As a professional nurse, I am also a career student, thus qualified to inform others about the state of education. Education in any setting lacks quality and quantity on every level...unless by happenstance students are blessed with an instructor passionate about assisting all learners with acquiring knowledge. I won't attest that these rare gems provide a "student centered" forum, but the quality is rich. What MOOC has done for me: It has not enriched my educational experience; MOOC is my education. My instructors Washingtondeceit, Brain Games, Khan Academy, Bill Vicars, David Woodruff, it's kind alike, Aaron Mullally, Crashcourse, and ftplectures have provided something more valuable than four-walled, tuition-driven, institutional education. Confident knowledge obtained from these brilliant facilitators has been incorporated into my practice, thus my patient's receive excellent care. With MOOC the fear of being unprepared or undertrained is nonexistent and provided free of charge. This comfort doesn't subdue frustration with the bureaucracy of being presented basic, robotic, uninspired, inflexible, and non-stimulative information labeled "prestigious education."

Ferreira's in depth response summarizes my experience with current traditional and non traditional learning environments. If presented with an option to attend a prestigious university or attend one of the enriching MOOC experiences, I would choose MOOC every time. With MOOC assistance, I am expertly prepared as I was in the 90's (traditional community college). I have access to an expert 24 hours a day. My community receives the best, because I reached out to the best (listed above).

Limitations of my response: slightly biased toward MOCC learning environments.

I enjoyed the scholarly exchanges, and truly hope this helps you.

Slightly biased toward MOOC learning environments.

Thank you for sharing your experience Ms. Channon Horne.

Happy to hear from you.

Hi Alaa,

MOOC or SPOC are just a form of learning. They would follow evolution like any other kind of mode of learning. I always give this example: Before we used only a pen to write, now we can write with a keyboard. In eLearning in general, it's the way to give learning which is changing, using more technology to improve comprehension and pedagogy.

Thouraya, you made an interesting observation. However,, any human behavior results from the interaction of personal characteristics with environmental parameters. This means that there is a mutual influence between learning and technology. For example, the cognitive processes of writing differ inusing pen and paper, from word processing technologies. A nice example within  this topic is the difference in text revision strategies as has been documented in many studies on writing with computers. .Using more technology as such is not necessarily improving education but it depends on the way technology as a mind tool can support cognitive processes.

Ms.Thouraya, you just pointed to the core concept behind presenting MOOC, which is Connectivism theory.

I would like here to add my voice to Prof. Joost that the relation between human behavior and technology is mutual. More than that, we "We off-load many cognitive capabilities onto the network, so that our focus as learners shifts from processing to pattern recognition" (Siemens, 2006, p.43). I may give some examples to make it clearer.

• Ex1: When you are connecting to the network, you don't need to know about the subject matter to be able to make a decision; you simply can search and get the right decision with all logic behind it.
• Ex2: information retention (long term memory) is not that big performance metric in a network; you can always search for the information and as many times you need it.

Representing knowledge as a network is somehow confusing and many researchers find it ambiguous. We already put many simple examples to illustrate Connectivism in our recent paper (Aldahdouh, Osório & Susana, 2015). You may find it interesting.

Aldahdouh, A. A., Osório, A. J., & Susana, C. (2015). Understanding knowledge network, learning and connectivism. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 12(10), 3–21. 

Siemens, G. (2006). Knowing knowledge. Lulu. com.

http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Oct_15/Oct15.pdf#page=7

Dear Alaa.

There has been other discussion in the RG. Check my contributions here: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_there_a_need_for_a_broader_perspective_of_the_MOOCversity

MOOCs are here to stay and they are a great resource.   I am looking at it from the angle of library support to persons who are taking these courses.   Many times the institution offering the course do not offer persons access to their resources and so this is where Public LIbraries and other libraries near to the individual comes in....How much support should they offer though, considering many libraries are already short on staff?

I think the MOOC will become more of a hybrid where the class physically meets for a weekend, breaks out online for several months during the team collaboration, and then meet up again to present final projects. The power of place and personal networking are necessities to build genuine trust.

Dear all,,

I would like to thank you all for participating in this session. Your comments were fruitful and helpful. I would like to share our investigation results with you. 

Please find our recent article.

http://www.tojdel.net/journals/tojdel/articles/v04i02/v04i02-06.pdf

Article Planning To Design MOOC? Think First!

Maybe this could help you : http://www.go-lab-project.eu/sites/default/files/files/publications/file/EPFL_TH7495.pdf