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Because of their unique qualities, MOOCs have some characteristics that make them valuable for society.
- MOOCs are designed for massive participation — MOOCs are gradually regarded as a way to address the growing number of individuals seeking to gain higher education (HE). MOOCs can also be delivered to increase participation in lifelong learning and training for very large numbers of people.
- MOOCs provide a full course experience for free, increasing access to education for all kinds of (non-formal and formal) learners (as courses offered free of charge to people all over the world, thus giving them the opportunity to decide for themselves what, where and when to study)
- MOOCs may be regarded as contributing to the democratization of HE, not only locally or regionally, but globally as well. Only an Internet connection is required to have access to quality education. Moreover, access to quality educationoffers citizens a better standard of life and the ability to engage more productively in all areas of human endeavour.
MOOCs thus can offer universal entry to high-quality education at no cost to the participants. One could position MOOCs as just another milestone in the process of transforming HE into a more open, accessible, flexible, affordable, transparent and accountable entity. However, the early research in MOOCs suggests that they tend to be taken by people who are already well qualified (see question ‘Who is the typical MOOC student?’), with a degree or higher. Thus the democratization argument has been countered by those who suggest that MOOCs may even exacerbate the digital divide.
The following reasons for societies to invest in MOOCs are frequently mentioned:
- To promote the development of a cutting-edge education
- To stimulate and motivate the adoption of new technologies and new forms of learning
- To offer expansive, open, free, accessible and always available knowledge (continuing education) within relevant educational fields
- To combine online and campus education
- To expand access, marketing and branding, as well as the potential for developing new revenue streams
- To reap the benefits presented by collaboration in virtual learning environments, including learning peer-to-peer, increasing digital skills, amplifying networks and recycling knowledge
- To use MOOCs as an admissions tool
- To increase enrolments and applications from students who want to ‘try before they buy‘ when considering university
- To these we can add more recent findings on government perspectives, which highlight the general awareness of the potential of using MOOCs for workforce development, but which also point out a lack of national strategies to promote MOOCs as a means to mitigate unemployment or for professional development (Garrido et al., 2016)
MOOCs have opened up new possibilities and new ways for learners to access education anytime, anywhere, with lower costs, allowing them to earn whilst learning. From the students’ point of view, MOOCs not only provide access to quality educational materials over the Internet but also help them learn flexibly. Moreover, they can compare materials and educational systems through MOOCs. Besides the learning itself, MOOCs provide the opportunity to connect with people who share the same interests or professional profiles.
As a result, citizens in general are able to reach out to new groups and generate new ideas, to initiate novel projects or other interpersonal engagements, for a wide variety of purposes. However, the absence of academic support for learners means that they must be prepared to learn on their own, or with peers. This can often be difficult for inexperienced learners.
Geographically, the MOOC stage is global, so it is very likely that the learning community will be international and provide an intercultural experience. When reducing this characteristic to quantitative aspects, the numbers show a global distribution with a shift towards developing countries in recent years: for example, only 43 % of Coursera participants already derived from North America in 2013 (UNESCO, 2013, pp. 5-6). The remaining 57 % were distributed around the world and derived from Asia (26 %), Europe (17 %), South America (10 %), Australia (2 %) and Africa (2 %). According to the MOOC provider ‘edX’, over 40% of their learners live in emerging economy countries (Inside Higher Ed, 2016). In 2016 China’s XuetangX, the first non-English MOOC platform entered into the Top 3 MOOC providers by registered users according to Class Central report (2017). In 2018, Miríada X offered 690 courses in Spanish and Portuguese to over 4 million users.
More generally, the Online Course Report (2016) published numbers of 35 million. learners at 570 universities and 12 providers in 2015. This has increased to 9400 courses by over 800 universities to 81 million students (Class Central, 2017). Also, the learners who participated in our Biz MOOC survey derived from 62 countries from all around the world.While MOOCs seem to offer the potential to make high-quality education available for everyone, in reality, access seems mainly limited to a specific category of learners. IPTS (2016) confirmed that also MOOC learners in Europe are individuals from privileged socioeconomic backgrounds. In addition to the intercultural dimension, MOOCs could provide a good opportunity to build a connection to peers (online and face-to-face; e.g. by identifying similar interests), so MOOCs can also enrich the social dimension of your learning experience. Some experiments show success of MOOC provision in addressing the people in need for education by re-engineering the generic MOOC model to allow for a broad spectrum of approaches and contexts, accounting for diverse languages, cultures, settings, pedagogies and technologies.