Hi Antonio, It is pertinent to ask this given the boom is having on universities

Strengths,

The visual language provides objective evidence format , simple and straightforward to learn. You can see and hear.

Its aim is to provide open content

Think maximum audience reach , it is necessary for an education with few resources.

Weaknesses ,

The limitations of visual language and its linearity , although they are working in this direction with video annotations. View the work done by our engineer HarvardX ( http://openvideoannotation.org).

Opportunities,

Prevalence of visual language that grows with user practices , especially now with the production of home videos into mobile media ( tablets and smartphones ) .

Threats

The production cost of a professional can be a threat in the beginning and will be forgotten by the spontaneity of users to value rapid communication . The mass production and ease of waste can generate more web content

Data MOOCs in Europe

http://openeducationeuropa.eu/en/european_scoreboard_moocs

Hi Antonio:

Although the issue could lead to a long debate (and you have much to say us about it), here's my opinion:

* Strengths: Allows for greater dissemination and reach of training courses, beyond space and time limits, at a reduced cost.

* Weaknesses: Lack of instructional structure, uneven quality, focus on teaching (course) and not on learning.

* Opportunities: Access to many people, unsurpassed distribution, democratization of education and training.

* Threats: That the forest (lots of poorly designed courses, just with talking heads) do not let them see the trees (the good courses, well-designed and relevant content). Difficulty discriminating quality courses, accreditation and assessment issues, ...

My answer is oriented towards xMOOCs such as coursera rather than cMOOCs:

.Strengths

- they potentially offer access to a wide range of learning/teaching resources.

.Weaknesses:

- they require students to learn to learn (with MOOCs) at the same time they have to learn.

- they are mainly teaching and teacher-oriented rather than learning and student oriented. Is this model still appropriate for distance learning?

- what's really Open in MOOCs?

- assessment: with peer assessment, students have to learn to assess at the same time they have to learn and learn to learn...

.Opportunities

- For life long learning: I have the feeling that xMOOCs are more relevant and efficient for life long learning and continuing education than for

.Threats

- they crowdsource learning by delegating some teaching tasks to students: is it really fair and ethical? can it be really efficient for students? Assessment for learning is an appealing model, but is it really what is achieved in MOOCs?

- They may give the feeling that less teachers are required.

The key to better understanding MOOCs is in focusing on the improved quality of information and information delivery. The good MOOCs are not just good - they offer outstandingly better deliver than many universities currently offer in terms of the quality of the 'talking head' - and of the credible nature and research that underpins the teaching background of such eminent talking heads.

Thanks everyone, I continue building this analysis.

Misalignment between Face-to-Face and Online Components

According to students, one challenge in this offering of the on-campus Machine Learning course was that the topics covered in class did not always line up with the material covered in the video lectures on a week-to-week basis. Students mentioned that they would have preferred a greater degree of alignment between online and on campus offerings, so that the material in-class would more directly address, and expand upon, the topics covered online.

https://my.vanderbilt.edu/douglasfisher/files/2013/06/JOLTPaperFinal6-9-2013.pdf

Thank you for your answer. I have received not enough answers to build a coherent SWOT analysis about MOOC. This was a research action: was it possible to build this kind of analysis in this environment? I see that we continue needing the cooperation of closer colleagues. Thanks again.

Interesting thread! So many good answers already. Everything probably has been said by others. What I could add: SWOT for the lecturer(s) who develop an xMOOC (rather than the students or the institution). Why? Because I have just developed an xMOOC for research methods and I'm beginning to build another one for business information systems (see attached link).

STRENGTHS: increases lecturer mobility and effectiveness - using the MOOC, I now supervise a very large number of students with a minimum of effort. This scales: I tested this with 100, I have no doubt it will work for 1,000 or 10,000 just the same. I also feel that I'm much more in touch with the xMOOC topics - I have never updated material so frequently and with so much anticipation. So there is increased joy of teaching in the xMOOC for me (and I love classroom teaching, too!) - a definite strength. And lastly: because of learning analytics (in my case: within Moodle), I can, for the first time, see what effect I have on ALL the students. The xMOOC is, I think, more results-focused than traditional teaching. 

WEAKNESSES: the effort to create a good MOOC is excruciating, or can be, with too few resources. To create an xMOOC alone is bloody hard. I would not recommend it. The amount of work required - from selecting and applying tools (animation, audio, video, layout etc.) to the completely changed didactics - is simply astonishing. Even for an old e-learning hand like myself. I had not seen it coming, I don't know why! I had heard (from the creator of an excellent Coursera MOOC) that the typical MOOC there has 10-20 developers and tutors. This points to another weakness: no good xMOOC without supporting teaching/tutoring community. It's a community effort with regard to development and execution. 

OPPORTUNITIES: as more and more MOOCs are developed, the MOOC will leave the general smothering shadow of all-purpose e-learning. As it grows up, developing a MOOC will become easier. Already, Moodle is an amazing (I found out, to my surprise) support as a platform. The greatest opportunity lies in the enormous demand and in the shortcomings of traditional education - not so much because our teaching sucks but because it gets harder and harder, systemically, to do what we used to do in this time and age.

Threats

I think now I'll put this answer on my blog.

http://bit.ly/DEDIMOO

http://birkenkrahe.com/wordpress

PS. for some reason, the last part of my reply was cut off. Not that it matters but who wants to be so rudely interrupted! ;-) So here goes...

THREATS: I'm an optimist, I can never think of threats. I prefer to cross this bridge when I get to it, I suppose. The greatest threat for the lecturer's perspective, which I have taken here is that MOOCs do not go beyond most of what we see today. That the opportunity for the lecturer is lost somehow. Honestly, I think we're already beyond the point of no return, if only because the technology is going virtual, following the supply of new technologies and the demand for virtualisation but who knows. Another threat is perhaps that too many lecturers miss out on the opportunities - and agree to be mere bystanders. Lots of room for creativity and participation here, I think!

Good luck with the analysis! (This whole post IS now on my blog)

http://birkenkrahe.com/wordpress/2016/02/18/moocs-a-swot-analysis/