MOOCs continue to dominate higher education headlines, but what is the current state of play, and what does the future hold for online course providers?
The rise of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) has not been a quiet one, and much indicates that the MOOC providers that stole higher education headlines throughout 2012 will continue to be a disruptive force in the sector throughout 2013 and beyond.
In the past two weeks, Stanford-backed Coursera and MIT and Harvard’s edX both announced a flurry of new partner institutions. Coursera, the largest of the main three MOOC platforms with over 2.7m students, announced 29 new universities, bringing its total partner count to 62. At the same time, edX added a further six partners, including its first institutions outside of the US, and now has a total of 12.
Meanwhile, in news welcomed by British Prime Minister David Cameron, MOOC provider Futurelearn added to its all British line-up with seven new partners including the British Council and the British Library, joining a number of prestigious UK institutions…
