{"id":1922,"date":"2015-03-16T11:24:27","date_gmt":"2015-03-16T11:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.proprofs.com\/c\/?p=1922"},"modified":"2026-05-01T09:14:35","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T09:14:35","slug":"what-are-massive-open-online-courses-moocs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.proprofstraining.com\/blog\/what-are-massive-open-online-courses-moocs\/","title":{"rendered":"What are Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Massive open online courses, or MOOCs, have been one of the biggest educational technology stories of the past three years. What started as an experiment \u2013 when Stanford professors Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig put their artificial intelligence course online for anyone to take &#8212; has turned into a major revolution, both in education and in corporate training.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">There are now thousands of MOOCs available on topics ranging from public speaking to advanced physics. MOOCs are offered by hundreds of universities and other organizations around the world, including Stanford, Harvard, and MIT, and millions of students participate in the courses.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But despite their widespread popularity among people in the know, there is still a lot of confusion surrounding MOOCs. This post attempts to clear up that confusion by answering the question:<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"What_is_a_MOOC\"><\/span>What is a MOOC?<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><i>MOOC<\/i> stands for massive open online course, a description that is pretty spot on. Let\u2019s look at each of those words individually to gain a greater understanding of what they mean in this context:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li><b><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Massive<\/span>. <\/b>A MOOC is called massive because it is scalable in terms of the number of students who can take the course. Some MOOCs have garnered enrollments of 100,000 students or more. However, this term doesn\u2019t mean that there <i>has<\/i> to be a huge number of students, merely that there <i>can <\/i>be. Some MOOCs have 2,000 students, some have 20,000, and some have significantly more than that. The key point is that there is no upper limit on the number of students \u2013 anyone who wants to can sign up and take the course.<\/li>\n<li><b><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Open<\/span>.<\/b> This is probably the least well-understood term of the four, and that is because it is used in two distinct ways. Some consider <i>open <\/i>to mean that the courses don\u2019t require any prior knowledge or qualifications, for example, a person with no previous experience in physics could sign up to take an advance physics MOOC. Others consider <i>open<\/i> to mean \u201cfree,\u201d as in, the courses are available free of charge. A better way to define <i>open<\/i> is that there are no barriers to taking the course. This definition encompasses both ideas: no knowledge\/experience barriers <i>and <\/i>no financial barriers.<\/li>\n<li><b><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Online<\/span>.<\/b> This is the easiest term to understand. A MOOC takes place online, on digital platforms, using digital tools. Students login and learn via their computers, tablets, or smartphones. All content is delivered online (usually in the form of videos and readings) and all activities, exams, and discussions take place online. Some organizations have started incorporating MOOC materials and activities into offline learning experiences, but a defining element of MOOCs is that anyone with an Internet-connected device can take the courses, no matter where they are.<\/li>\n<li><b><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Course<\/span>. <\/b>Finally, a MOOC is a course. However, just like the <i>open<\/i> aspect, the term <i>course<\/i> isn\u2019t as self-explanatory as it seems at first. The digital environment has greatly expanded the idea of what a course can be. Some MOOCs look and feel very much like regular online courses \u2013 they have defined schedules, and students login to a platform called a learning management system (LMS) to access the content and participate in the activities. Other MOOCs look much less like regular courses \u2013 many are self-scheduled, and some don\u2019t rely on an LMS at all, but rather take place in distributed locations across the web, using blogs, social media sites, virtual collaboration spaces, and other tools.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Perhaps the best way to understand what is a MOOC is to think about the courses not as a thing, but as an <i>idea. <\/i>In practice, a MOOC can be large or small; it can use a variety of digital technologies; it can be scheduled or self-paced. But the idea behind all massive open online courses is that they are learning experiences in which anyone can participate. When you think about it, that\u2019s a pretty amazing idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Massive open online courses, or MOOCs, have been one of the biggest educational technology stories of the past three years. What started as an experiment \u2013 when Stanford professors Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig put their artificial intelligence course online for anyone to take &#8212; has turned into a major revolution, both in education and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":43091,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-elearning"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>What Are MOOCs? Benefits, Examples &amp; How They Work<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"MOOCs are changing how millions learn worldwide. Discover what massive open online courses are, how they work, their benefits, and how to use them in your training strategy.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.proprofstraining.com\/blog\/what-are-massive-open-online-courses-moocs\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What Are MOOCs? Benefits, Examples &amp; How They Work\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"MOOCs are changing how millions learn worldwide. Discover what massive open online courses are, how they work, their benefits, and how to use them in your training strategy.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.proprofstraining.com\/blog\/what-are-massive-open-online-courses-moocs\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"ProProfs Training Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-03-16T11:24:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-05-01T09:14:35+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.proprofstraining.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/yay-540711-digital-1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2122\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1415\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kamy Anderson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Kamy Anderson\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What Are MOOCs? 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His blog focuses on trends in eLearning, online training, webinars, course development, employee training, gamification, LMS, AI, and more. Kamy's articles have been published in eLearningIndustry, TrainingMag, Training Zone, and Learning Solutions Magazine. 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