MOOC STORY

Instructor: Asma Alkhuzaimi

2007 In 2007, David Wiley at Colorado State

University opened his course on Open Education.

As a result, about 50 people from 8 countries participated in the course.

2008 MOOC was first introduced in 2008 by Dave

Cormier to describe Siemens and Downes’ “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge” course.

It was initially designed for a group of 25 enrolled, fee paying students to study for credit and at the same time was opened up to registered only learners worldwide.

2008 Using many different platforms to engage

students with the topic, including Facebook groups, Wiki pages, blogs, forums and other resources.

As a result, over 2,300 people participated in the course without paying fees or gaining credit (Wikipedia, 2012) and 170 of them created their own blogs.

2011 In 2011, two Stanford Professors  Sebastian

Thrun and Peter Norvig decided to offer “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” for free online.

Designed to resemble real classroom experiences and offer high-quality classes for everyone, the idea had the advantage of carrying the prestigious Stanford name.

2011

More than 160,000 students in 190 countries signed up, and for the first time, an open online course was truly ‘massive’.

2012 In 2012, this led Thrun and Norvig to build

a new business model for online knowledge, the start-up Udacity.

It did not take long until other professors adapted their ideas using own resources. Within one year, two more American start-ups for MOOCs appeared: Coursera and EdX.

2013 In 2013, the Open University is building its

own MOOC platform, Futurelearn, which will feature universities from the United Kingdom.

There are many other independent MOOC initiatives appearing, including OPen2study in Australia and Iversity in Germany.

RESOURCES

Marques, J. Apr 17, 2013 . A Short History of MOOCs and Distance Learning . In MOOC news and reviews. Retrieved December 26, 2013,

from http://moocnewsandreviews.com./