A study on massive open online courses in higher education

Abstract

In this paper the current usage of active Massive Open Line Courses (MOCC) is analysed. First a systematic literature revision is performed, in order to identify and classify the published works and the existing developments in this area, being the most used MOOCs platforms also found out. Afterwards, a content analysis of the two most popular MOOCs’ platforms – Coursera and EdX – and a comparison between them is performed. This analysis takes into account, among others, the number and areas of knowledge of the accessible courses, the Higher Education Institutions (HEI) that offer courses using the platforms, the length of the courses and the expected workload for a student to successfully complete the MOOCs. The main findings were that the use of MOOCs has been growing in the last years and that Coursera and EdX are the two main platforms used by HEIs in order to make MOCCs available.