MOOCs: This could be huge...

Moocs are already big - in reach and in hype - and are predicted to explode. Zoë Corbyn checks in to learn if they are more than just a novelty and to find out what it's like to teach a class of 38,000
Kristin Sainani, clinical assistant professor in health policy at Stanford University, has just finished teaching her most popular course ever. But its popularity was far beyond the scale of a class of several hundred students, with seminar rooms and lecture theatres bursting at the seams. The take-up was off the charts. More than 38,000 students scattered across the globe signed up to take her online course, "Writing in the Sciences", which aims to help scientists become better writers.
Over eight weeks, the students took part via short online video lectures, discussion forums, automated quizzes and assignments graded by peers. The online-only course, which is based on the postgraduate course that Sainani teaches in the traditional manner in person at Stanford, was delivered under the banner of Coursera, a start-up company based in nearby Silicon Valley, which hands out certificates to students who complete.
Sainani's programme was a Mooc, a massive open online course, a new beast in the academy that has risen rapidly in prominence, attracting considerable hype and media coverage. It would probably be fair to call "Mooc" the biggest buzzword in higher education in 2012. Read more...