Massive Open Online Chemistry

The expression MOOC, an acronym of Massive Open Online Course, was originally coined in 2008 by Dave Cormier to describe an online course on Connectivism and Connective Knowledge run by George Siemens and Stephen Downes. This was a connectivist MOOC, or cMOOC, in which the focus was on the community rather than a traditional content-driven university course.

In late 2011, academics at Stanford launched three MOOCs, which attracted hundreds of thousands of enrolments and led to the spin out of Udacity and Coursera as commercial MOOC providers. MIT reacted and was joined by Harvard forming edX in early 2012. The New York Times named 2012 ‘The Year of the MOOC’. While the term MOOC had stuck, these courses were very different to connectivist cMOOCs. The Udacity, Coursera and edX courses, sometimes referred to as xMOOCs, were typically close adaptations of existing university courses, with structures and teaching objectives familiar to any university graduate but delivered wholly online. 

The discussion surrounding MOOCs has tended to be somewhat polarised into those that see them either as a threat to a student-centred face-to-face education system or as a revolutionary force bringing free education to the world. The truth, as always, is much more nuanced. 

So what is the deal with MOOCs? Is the hype to be believed, and if so why should you put on, teach or take an MOOC?

In this article the authors consider MOOCs in the context of teaching and learning and discuss two MOOC courses, exploring the content, delivery and outcomes of these.