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MOOC.

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Well, what's that?

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The word MOOC is an acronym.

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I should at least say once what it stands[br]for: Massive Online Open Course.

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That was the easy part, just to give you[br]those words.

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Now to give a definition, that's going to[br]be very challenging.

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For every one of those words, I think it's[br]fair

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to say that there is a generally accepted[br]understanding of what

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the word means, but then there is a[br]substantial number of

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people who challenge that understanding,[br]who try to push it further.

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For instance, massive, you can't give a[br]number there because

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a thousand students is already a large[br]class for an instructor.

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But it's ridiculously small compared to some[br]of the MOOCs

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which have managed to attract hundreds of[br]thousands of students.

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Online should be clear.

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It means people do activities online such[br]as watching

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videos, reading texts, answering quizzes,[br]or talking on forums.

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That's what most people accept but it[br]ignores that

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some professors have tried to preach to[br]the physical world.

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For instance, by meeting their[br]students, or organizing Meet Ups in

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different cities, or by assigning[br]real-life physical lab work to do at home.

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The course part should also be clear.

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The beast must have pedagogical goals and[br]a structure that matches those goals.

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That means they should be more like a tutorial [br]than a reference manual or an encyclopedia.

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But then, some people throw in other[br]concepts with the word, course.

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Maybe you should get a degree at the end.

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Maybe you should have a class and teach a[br]bunch of

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students at once, so, a big group of[br]students that you teach.

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Finally, the word open is more[br]controversial.

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In MOOCs, it's open because students[br]should

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be allowed to take the class for free.

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They should have access to the content for[br]free.

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They can have to pay for some extra[br]services, such as a certificate.

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But really in the end, access to content[br]is free for the learner.

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The problem here is that it's a very[br]different usage

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of the word open from the usage[br]popularized in the past.

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For instance, before there existed open

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educational resources or open courseware,[br]that

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still exists but it used the word open in[br]a different way.

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Open educational resources are teaching[br]material with a very permissive license,

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and is available for any teacher to use[br]and reuse in their own class.

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It's sort of encouraging recycling if you[br]want.

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Open CourseWare is one of MIT's[br]initiatives in

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this direction, offering MIT classes for[br]anyone to reuse.

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If you want, they' are like open educational resources already structured in a course format.

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Ultimately with MOOC, or with Massive[br]Online Open Course, you get four

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words, four different flavors, and[br]everyone

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in every course combines these flavors[br]differently.

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That's the way I see it, at least.

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The most important aspect of the MOOC

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revolution in education is that new[br]technology

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to support each of those flavors is

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being actively developed and integrated[br]into one framework.

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Then educators can tweak each, innovate,[br]and

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repurpose the technology for their own[br]means.

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For instance, I've heard of very[br]successful,

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small, private, online courses using[br]M.O.O.C. platforms.

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And many universities have started to use

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these platforms to support their own[br]residential teaching.

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That's what's exciting about MOOCs: a lot

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of new technology aimed at improving[br]education.