MOOCs

Today's topic is massive open online courses (MOOCs) - these are online courses which have few clear definitions:

1) they are aimed at very large amount of users
2) they are free or semi-free (meaning they may have some paid content but most of the material stays free)
3) they are very flexible in all sences: you can both study it in whatever order convenient for you, and you can add the material yourself, provided you prove you're capable to do so.

Lots of modern universities are introducing MOOCs a part of their own curricula. It not only helps to keep the material up-to-date, it also massively reduces the amount of upkeep: after all you don't have to pay a lecturer to deliver one lecture 100 times when you can pay him once to make a video of it. And in the same time, other speakers may emerge and share their material on the MOOC.

Here are some examples of most popular MOOCs:

edX

EdX is an open-source platform offered by edX.org. It is the same platform that universities such as Harvard and MIT use to offer courses to 100,000+ students. It was released as open source in March 2013, and the goal was to act as the WordPress for MOOC platforms, allowing users to use plug-ins to expand the core functionality. edX has a fast, modern feel, with the ability to accommodate large enrollments.

edX is suitable for organizations that want a modern, flexible, robust course-management platform. Although it is open source, investment will need to be made in both installation and some maintenance. But the return will be a platform that can provide best-in-class content to thousands of students.

Moodle

Moodle is an open-source learning management system (LMS) that allows users to build and offer online courses. It was built for traditional online classrooms rather than MOOCs, which attract a large number of students. It tends to be easier to install than edX, and there are hosted or one-click install options available.

Moodle is suited for organizations that want a full-featured, customizable LMS. The platform offers more than edX in terms of educational tools, analytics and SCORM compliance. The trade-off is that the platform is over 10 years old. The number of configuration options can be daunting, and system performance suffers with larger numbers of students.

Actually BSU is actively using this one, for better or worse.

That's all for now, thanks for attention!