Best 5 MOOC's in 2020

 

 

Introduction

A massive open online course popularly known as “MOOC” is internet based platform which provides distance education to unlimited number of students worldwide from the best institution around the world.

The MOOC was first termed by David Cormier and it was started in the year 2008.  The first university to start MOOC is university of Manitoba (Canada) in 2008 which offered a free online course and attracted 2200 students. Later in 2011 Stanford MOOC was started and it offered three free online courses which became a huge hit and triggered the modern MOOC’s movement.

In April 2012, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, colleagues from Stanford who were involved in the Stanford MOOCs, started Coursera. In May same year, Harvard and MIT joined together to create the Edx platform.  In the same year few more MOOCs were launched namely Udacity (USA), FutureLearn (UK), iversity (Germany), MiriadaX (Spain). In 2013 Open Edx, open sources its MOOCs platform which triggers many government worldwide to start its respective national MOOCs. From 2013 to 2106 many national MOOCs portal were launched namely, France (FUN), China (XuetangX), Jordan (Edraak), Malaysia and Italy (EduOpen), India (SWAYAM).

The MOOC uses several learning strategies such as gamification, adaptive learning etc., whereas the gamification is the use of gaming techniques for non-game situations and adaptive learning is the process of adjusting the speed of learning based on learner’s profile.

Contrary to regular college or university courses, MOOCs can attract thousands of learners around the world. It can come in the form of active session, with participant interaction, or as self-study archived content. MOOCs can be free, or there can be a fee-either on a subscription basis or a onetime charge. Most of the MOOCs offer free of cost delivery of courses and a paid verified certificate option. In the recent times the process of integrating the MOOC with formal education is on the way in India.

 

Growth of MOOC

An estimated 10 million more learners were enrolled in MOOCs in 2019 than in 2018, resulting in an estimated global enrolment of 100 million and 10% year over growth in student numbers. 900 plus universities are participating, 13500 plus courses are listed in MOOCs, with 820 micro credentials and 50 MOOC based degrees. MOOCs have seen a arrive enrollments since March 2020 thanks to the present covid-19 situations. Enrolments in Coursera has increase and was 640% higher from mid-march to mid-April than during an equivalent period last year, growing from 1.6 million to 10.3 million. Similarly at Udemy another MOOC provider was up by 400% in March this year. The current pandemic situation  has increased interest in online education. All MOOC providers, especially, have experienced explosive growth. The top three MOOC service providers (Coursera, edX, and FutureLearn) registered as many new users in April as within the whole of 2019. The epidemic broke through that wall. About 25-30% of the entire registered users on these platforms came after the pandemic. New users are more engaged than before, possibly because many of us find themselves having overtime during quarantine. Although visitors are slowly descending, they're still above they were before the pandemic. Coursera has managed to take care of momentum through initiatives like offering free certificates for 115 courses and giving free access to its catalog to college students and unemployed workers worldwide via Coursera for Campus and Coursera for state. Topics associated with technology within the pre-pandemic period were popular, with a stress on the whole top ten jobs. After the pandemic, there's an increase in interest in soft skills and topics of public interest. Personal development is currently favorite topic, with self-improvement and communication skills reaching the highest ten, also as arts, design, humanities and learning. Unsurprisingly, health and medicine also are our top 10 topics

 

Below is the list of top 5 MOOC courses providers

MOOC platform	Learners	Courses	Micro credentials	Degrees
Coursera	45 million	3,800	420	16
edX	24 million	2,640	292	10
Udacity	11.5 million	200	40	1
FutureLearn	10 million	880	49	23
Swayam	10 million	1,000	0	0

Source: Class Central

 

Details of Top 5 MOOC worldwide:

Coursera- USA- the top most provider of MOOCs.

It was started in 2012 by Stanford University computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller. Princeton, Stanford, University of Michigan, and University of Pennsylvania were the first universities to offer content on the platform. The platform contains groups of training courses that build skills in a specific subject in addition to degrees and a workforce development product for companies and government institutions. As of 2019, Coursera has over 45 million registered users and over 3,800 courses. Coursera courses range from four to ten weeks, with one to two hours of video lectures per week. These courses apply many learning methods such as quizzes, weekly exercises, peer-to-peer assignments, and sometimes a final project or test. Training courses are also provided upon request, in which case users can spend their time completing the course with all the available materials at one time. website URL:http://www.coursera.org

 edX- USA

EdX is an online education destination and MOOC provider, offering high-quality courses from the world's best universities and institutions to learners everywhere.  Founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2012, it offers courses on a nonprofit basis and also as an open source. With Open edX, educators and technologists can create educational tools, contribute new features to the platform, and make innovative solutions to profit students everywhere. There are over 2,640 courses available on the edX platform. URL: https://www.edx.org/

Udacity –USA

Udacity has pivoted faraway from its prior identity as a MOOC platform. It had been the primary of the first MOOC platforms to succeed in unicorn status (> $1 billion valuation), and it partners with technology companies to make Nanodegrees that train students for technology-focused jobs. Udacity may be a for-profit MOOC platform that focuses on career development through technical and vocational online courses. Topics span six areas of study, which include data science, cloud computing, autonomous systems, and AI. Students also can take programming and development classes in C++, Blockchain, and Android developer. In addition, working professionals may complete MOOCs that help them gain product management and marketing analytics skills. In addition to its diverse course offerings, Udacity offers comprehensive career services, including in-person job training, resume writing guidelines, and LinkedIn best practices. Udacity Talent allows users to create detailed profiles and communicate with major employers like Google and Mercedes-Benz. URL: https://www.udacity.com/

 FutureLearn / United Kingdom

FutureLearn is a UK-based MOOC provider. The Open University floated FutureLearn in 2012. FutureLearn is now owned by the Open University and the Australia based SEEK Group. With almost 10 million users, FutureLearn is the UK’s biggest MOOC platform. Most of its university partners are located in the UK and Europe, but it also has a few university partners in other countries, including the United States, Australia, and South Korea. FutureLearn offers its own credential program, called as FutureLearn Programs. Among the MOOC platforms, FutureLearn leads the way through degree offerings, with 15 programs currently available (including one Bachelor's degree). Students can complete one of 418 short courses to learn new skills in areas like digital product management, ecology and wildlife science, and the future of globalization. They may also obtain microcredentials from leading universities and major companies. URL: https://www.futurelearn.com/

 SWAYAM MOOC program in India

SWAYAM – abbreviation stands for “Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds” and in Hindi, it means “Self”, is India’s Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) platform launched in July 2017. This platform is a Digital India initiative to aim to provide a quality education through online mode to the citizens of India. The goal is to enable access to quality education, support lifelong learning, and increase enrollment in higher education. The current SWAYAM platform is developed by the Ministry of HRD, NPTEL, IIT Madras, with the help of GOOGLE Inc., and Persistent System Ltd. 

SWAYAM hosts all courses taught from 9th class to post-graduation. It is an umbrella platform where all the government online courses are hosted on one platform. 12 national coordinators oversee the operations of SWAYAM namely for school education – NIOS and NCERT, for Out of school education (Distance education)- IGNOU and NITTTR, for Undergraduate education – NPTEL, AICTE, CEC, IIMB, and Postgraduate education – UGC, NPTEL, AICTE, IIMB. Currently, the portal is hosting 500+ courses open for enrollment and 80000 hours of learning, covering school, UG, PG, engineering, law, and other professional courses The courses or program format in SWAYAM are in 4 sections first is a video lecture, second reading material that can be download/printed third being self-assessment test through tests and quizzes and last fourth is online discussion forum for clearing the doubts.  URL: https://swayam.gov.in/

 Employment Opportunities post Online Education

The Online Education provides inexpensive education for college-wide courses in many areas of study. However, it's said that employers aren't completely convinced with the extent of education and coursework provided by the MOOCs unless the candidate is trying to find jobs within the Technology or computing sector.

Generally, it's said that MOOCs are focused on providing education which will improve skills in specific fields of study, mostly focused on technology, science and arithmetic. Although a number of the web courses provide records of completion of the courses, the web education concept is comparatively new. it's found that students are ready for this new concept however many employers are still hesitant and skeptical about it.

To summarize, MOOCs are an excellent platform for education not only in India but across the planet, but it does accompany its pros and cons when it involves the longer term prospects of scholars who have lost their MOOCs. Since the concept is new and recently garnered praise, it'd end up to be one among the simplest concepts lately.