Massive Open Online Courses: Trojan Horse of Revolution in Higher Education?

By Blanka Šoulavá. In November 2012 the New York Times published an article called The Year of the MOOC. At the same time, Coursera, one of the biggest companies offering massive open online courses (MOOCs), overtook both the biggest online social networks as Facebook and Twitter by reaching 1 million users in about only four months, which means six times faster than its competitors. The MOOCs are one part of revolution brought by the Web 2.0. They are coming at the time of unprecedented globalisation, increasing demand for higher education, universities suffering from significant funding cuts, but also students struggling to pay higher tuition fees (since 2000, in the USA there has been a 49% increase at private universities and 73% rise at public universities). More...