So What Exactly Happened to the MOOC?

In 2012, Massive Open Online Courses Were Supposed to Revolutionize Higher Education. Then They Disappeared—But Only from the Headlines

Ten years ago, in May 2012, Harvard and MIT announced the launch of edX, their nonprofit platform for Massive Open Online Courses (better known by the acronym MOOCs). Together with Coursera and Udacity (both launched in the first months of 2012), these three platforms promised to make “the best education in the world freely accessible to any person,” as Coursera put it in their mission statement. The New York Times called 2012 “the year of the MOOC,” and the Chronicle of Higher Education covered “MOOC mania.” The promise of MOOCs …

Will Online Courses Make Education a Human Right?

The Overwhelming Majority of Today's MOOC Students Are Western, White, and Well-Off. Recent Experiments Suggest How That Could Change.

Just the first word in the name—massive open online course—poses the question. Just how big can MOOCs be?

MOOCs combine filmed lectures, readings, course material, and online interactions among professors and …