(28) At about the same time, the idea of connectivism, a novel learning theory, evolved. Students in this course were able to interact with the instructors and each other through an online conference environment or access audio and video lecture recordings and discussion forums afterward.

This deficiency was fulfilled when the first MOOC, Connectivism and Connective Knowledge, was offered in 2008 by Siemens and Downe from the University of Manitoba with an enrollment of 2000 people from around the globe. By instruction we mean student–teacher interactions in a process of knowledge transfer organized in a sequenced and meaningful structure. (17, 18)Īlthough early resources mentioned above can potentially supply an end-user with instruction materials, they lack a crucial component of an instruction process, which is instruction itself. A brief look at the numbers reveals that there are more than 3 million people from over 200 countries registered for at least one course at Coursera alone. The idea of MOOCs offering free education accessible worldwide has received universal acclaim. Encouraging, (9, 10) critical, (11, 12) polemical, (13-15) and cautionary (16) perspectives were among them. In the first half of 2013, more than a half of the Chronicle of Higher Education issues featured articles about MOOCs. The New York Times, (1) Time, (2) MIT Technology Review, (3, 4) Wall Street Journal, (5) Guardian, (6) and The Economist, (7, 8) have published stories focused specifically on MOOCs. Since the launch in 2012 of the three largest MOOC platforms-Udacity, Coursera, and edX-the phenomenon of MOOCs have received broad and generally positive attention in the mass media. These mean that they target a vast enrollment and are free for everyone. Two important features of online courses that classify them as MOOCs are contained in the first two letters of the abbreviation: massive and open.

In the last several years, the situation has changed dramatically with the appearance of massive open online courses (or MOOCs) offered on the Web by non- and for-profit organizations.

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