International MOOCs facilitators

EUA has published its second Occasional Paper on the topic of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Authored by Michael Gaebel, Director of the Higher Education Policy Unit at EUA, it also looks in detail at a number of issues related to the development of MOOCs that are directly relevant for universities. The full paper can be downloaded here.
International MOOCs facilitators
Despite the fact that MOOCs have gained popularity in other parts of the world, the focus is still in the US, with providers such as Coursera, edX and Udacity not only growing in size, but also developing much more distinguishable profiles. For universities, participation in these platforms is not only solid from the technical points of view and the services provided, but also makes investment and risk in MOOCs rather containable. In addition, a main attraction for European and other international higher education institutions to join is that it guarantees international visibility...
Udemy
Established in 2010, it provides 8 000 courses for one million learners. Courses are based on practical skills, and the target are learners from all walks of life, those who want to improve, for example, their computer skills, yoga, astronomy or just learn how to negotiate a higher salary. Udemy works with individual lecturers, not with institutions. It takes pride in recruiting expert lecturers from everywhere, including business and Ivy League universities. But it invites anybody to become a lecturer, and also offers courses to help people to set up their courses, and meet the quality requirements. It provides a detailed list of criteria that have to be fulfilled to get a course published (e.g. at least 30 minutes of content, of which 60% has to be video; clear structure; criteria to be met for audio and video quality; a free-to-try lecture etc.). Most courses charge a fee between US$9 and US$99.
… and other platforms
There are more platforms, some of them already existing before the MOOC hype started, such as the longstanding Apple University, one of the pioneers in offering lectures online; and Sakai (www.sakaiproject.org), which aims at building communities of educators to create open software to advance learning, teaching and research. Institutions can become members of the Sakai Foundation, or Canvas (www.canvas.net), which has 4.5 million users and facilitates professional and academic courses, usually offered by higher education institutions or other education providers. Even though all these platforms are based in the US, however, they are by no means national platforms, but open for international participation. This is true regarding the institutions that offer courses, but also regarding the course participation, as for example the map of Coursera’s global footprint suggests (www.insidehighered.com/blogs/globalhighered/mapping-courseras-global-footprint). Download the full paper here.