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By Lynn O'Shaughnessy. Massive open online courses, or MOOCs, have been heralded as a way to reach the disadvantaged, and particularly those without access to higher education in developing countries. 
A new study by the University of Pennsylvania that surveyed nearly 35,000 MOOC students, however, revealed that most of the individuals taking advantage of these online courses already have college degrees. Seventy nine percent of the students possessed a bachelor's degree and 44 percent had taken at least some graduate education courses. More...

Earlier this year, Christina Blanch, an adjunct professor at Ball State University, taught what turned out to be a very popular MOOC, titled "Gender Through Comic Books." The course's popularity offered insight into the success of MOOCs and the role of online courses in education.
About the Course
According to the course page, students used comics as a medium to analyze gender identity, roles, and stereotypes. Real-time interviews, interactive video lectures, and online student discussions were all parts of the class. In January, Blanch told Wired that the class would have the chance to interview notable comic-book writers; including Mark Waid, Terry Moore, and Gail Simone; as well as Marvel editors Sana Amanat and Steve Wacker. As for reading material, Blanch mentioned that the class would read a range of works, from DC's Batman to smaller publishers' works, such as Saga and Strangers in Paradise. See more...

By Meeta Sengupta. MOOCs are still in their infancy, their technical feasibility has been tested but little else. We now know that they work, that there is a large section of the population that is interested. How much of this is a market? We are not sure yet (yes, there are forecasts). And so we arrive at the stage, as with every innovation, where we try to understand revenue models. There are some revenue models for some MOOCs being tested now. Corporate MOOCs of course have a revenue model built in, and there are other pathways to success too. More...

By Michael Fitzgerald. It's not your father's corporate training. EdX wants to help companies offer their own massive open online courses to keep employees' skills updated. For corporations, massive open online courses, or MOOCs, matter because they might become a major source of technical talent and training. No matter if 140,000 out of 150,000 students in an online programming class drop out -- there are still 10,000 people being trained, a substantial potential resource in a world desperate for technical talent. More to the point, companies can run their own MOOCs, tailored to their own needs. That's one goal for EdX, which released its code as open-source back in June and has also released its hosting scripts. More...

By Marc Mcilhone. “We consider the African Virtual University (AVU) Project very critical to the effort to improve access to higher education in Africa and are pleased to learn that the deliberations on the integration of e-learning and open education into mainstream education programs was fruitful,” concluded Stefan Muller, Lead Economist of the African Development Bank’s (AfDB) East Africa Regional Resource Center (EARC) during the first international conference African Virtual University organized from November 20-22, 2013 in Nairobi. Under the topic “Integrating eLearning and Open Education to Increase Access to Quality Education and Training”, the conference brought together more than 100 participants including Ministries of Education and 22 universities from the Multinational AVU support project** as well as the private sector. The main objective of this first gathering was to discuss the future of e-learning in Africa and the role of Open Education Resources (OERs) including the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in the ICT learning revolution.

By Bahk Eun-ji. A Dutch education expert said that Korean students can get not only quality education but also European experience in the Netherlands. 
“Consider the rich heritage of a European country such as the Netherlands to optimize your skills and knowledge in a vibrant and culturally diverse environment,” Willemijn van Os, the director of Nuffic Netherlands Education Support Office (NESO) Korea, said in a recent interview with The Korea Times. More...

By Florence Armein. In his book, “Finnish Lessons,” Pasi Sahlberg, one of Finland’s most celebrated educators and scholars, stated that educational systems are facing a twin challenge: how to change schools so that students may acquire new types of knowledge and skills required in an unpredictably changing world, and how to make sure that new learning is accessible to all young people irrespective of their socioeconomic condition. 
Finland is no stranger to these twin challenges. Since the early 1990s, Finland worked steadily at reform, taking off from a system that barely met international averages to one counting among the leading educational systems today. More...