The inexorable rise of MOOCs

An academic brand and provider that has been in existence for just 12 months, now has over 3 million students who hail from over 210 countries. That brand is Coursera, and its’ success dramatically demonstrates the pulling power and impact of MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses on the Education sector.

Unsurprisingly crowdsourcing guru Clay Shirky heralds the game changing power of MOOCs writing, “Higher education is now being disrupted; our MP3 is the massive open online course”. Not to be outdone, Simon Nelson the launch CEO of Futurelearn - the UK’s first MOOC - believes that the new platform has the potential to become a social networking site for the student community as popular as Facebook. Whilst there is plenty of hype around, MOOCs certainly are a disruptive innovation, with all that means for incumbent players, who at a minimum need a coherent strategy regarding this new phenomenon.

MOOCs could instigate, or at the very least hasten, the disaggregation of teaching, assessment and accreditation. They may drive down the fees for higher education courses provided by undifferentiated universities. Sir Michael Barber, perhaps with the interests of his Pearson paymasters in mind, forecasts the emergence of “pick-and-mix students” assembling learning from a range of sources. He would like to see students getting access to government funding to study MOOCs - perhaps the very force that will precipitate the avalanche that Barber and his co-authors of the recent IPPR report predict will engulf many HEIs.

MOOCs have their origins in the desire for Open Education – free access for as many students as possible - and the subsequent endeavours to harness online channels to this end from 2000 onwards. This laudable original intent is now equally open to proliferation in business models, hence the growing interest in MOOCs amongst venture capitalists and ‘for profit’ Education providers like Coursera and Udacity. It remains to be seen whether the implicit tension between ‘Open’ and profit motives can be successfully resolved to the satisfaction of all concerned.

Pedagogy, quality and completion rate concerns also stalk MOOCs; their open, online, global nature, making top-down regulation a non-starter. Conversely, accepted social ratings and rankings are likely to quickly emerge to condemn poorly regarded courses and laud well-received MOOCs, in classic survival of the e-fittest fashion.

So what does all of this mean for HEIs in the UK? 
• The rapid emergence and rise of MOOCs at one level simply serves to amplify the need for traditional universities to review and be clear on their wider strategy for online learning and OER
• MOOCs  present an opportunity for HEIs to think creatively and innovatively about new pedagogical practices, business models and flexible learning approaches
• At one and the same time MOOCs open up UK HEIs to more diverse and intense global competition in certain spaces, whilst offering the prospect of building their brand around the world
• In the short term MOOCs may siphon away part time tech savvy potential students; UK HEIs will need to explore how this segment and other early adopters are successfully re-engaged with their offering
• New channel hybrid approaches should be explored, just as the potential role for, and interplay between, cMOOCs (connected) and xMOOCs (content-based) should be considered
• MOOCs also represent a great opportunity to micro analyse student behaviours and attainment click by click.

In many ways MOOCs are just one early manifestation of the potential for digital channels to revolutionise teaching and education in the years ahead. Marking your HEI out as a technical innovator, prepared to embrace new channels in a professional, considered and well-executed way is likely to stand your brand in good stead, whether an avalanche is coming or not.