MOOCs open top universities to the world

An emerging form of online education, called massive open online courses, provides access to renowned universities to people around the world. But can it improve the education of students in developing countries?
Unsatisfied with the curriculum at the University of El Salvador where he is a professor of electrical engineering, Carlos Martinez enrolled in a massive open online course - or MOOC, which when pronounced rhymes with "spook" - titled Circuits and Electronics offered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology via the Internet to anyone interested...
Parlez-vous MOOC?
The language barrier can also pose a problem, Bates added, as younger students generally need instruction in their native language and MOOCs have not expanded far beyond English. "If the MOOCs are coming from Ivy League universities in the United States then language can be a problem," Bates said.
Interest in MOOC courses, however, is not restricted to the English-speaking world. Coursera saw that its first 1 million students came from 196 countries: 38 percent from the United States, followed by nearly 5.9 percent from Brazil, 5.2 percent from India and 4.1 percent from China. Both Coursera and edX announced in February that they would offer courses run by partner universities in languages other than English. Read more...