The COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt the teaching and learning in international higher education. Those of us in the global South have particularly been hard hit, struggling to balance working/ functioning economies, a struggling healthcare system, education, commerce, trade, transport, and the community spread of what was later found to be…

Massive open online courses are increasingly popular. One characteristic of most massive open online courses is that they are offering educational contents to masses of different individual learners. At the same time, a particular challenge for the individual learner could be the massiveness of such courses, that is, that one is part of a large…

Much is made of the diversity for MOOCs learners--with their varied motivations and interests; yet MOOCs are often run and judged on the assumption that learners would progress through the course in its entirety, to completion. This paper presents an analysis of three recently delivered MOOCs that were designed to support a broader set of learner…

As demand for Anatomy and Physiology education increases faster than construction projects and budgets, instructors are finding themselves in front of ever-growing classroom sizes. Teaching large classes presents a number of challenges, including planning the courses, navigating technical equipment, handling exams and student accommodations, or…

Engagement with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) at the University of Edinburgh has emerged from its strategic priorities to explore and innovate in the area of online and technologically supported approaches to teaching and learning. This paper provides an account of analysis aimed at understanding who Edinburgh MOOC learners are, who elects…

In understanding the changes that are impacting the global higher education sector, developing a critique of the relationships between technology and technological innovation, new managerialism and financialisation, and the impact of the secular crisis of global capitalism is critical. Moreover, it is important to critique these changes…

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are all the rage these days and are being offered as a potential way to shorten the degree-attainment process and thereby reduce costs. At New England College of Business and Finance (NECB), staff focus on what the author likes to call "classically offered online classes" or COOCs, instead of MOOCs.…

The techniques used in massive open online courses (MOOCs) are compared with supersizing in the fast food industry. Similarities include the profit motives, marketing techniques, criticisms, industry defences, and evolution of the two controversies. While fast food restaurants strategically increase the size of their meal courses and consumer…

Rising costs, perceived declining value, and weak evidence of quality outcomes bedevil contemporary higher education. One innovation intended to address these problems is the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). This article recommends that the educational technology community and others get REAL about MOOCs by focusing more serious effort on…

The introduction of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as a vehicle for education delivery presents opportunities and challenges. In the context of the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre (Wicking Centre), the driver to develop a MOOC was the promise of addressing the international deficit in evidence-based dementia education, as well…

Since 2012, corporations, politicians, journalists and educators have asserted that MOOCs--massive open online courses--are radically changing North American and global education, and for the better. This article offers a counterpoint to the techno-deterministic and optimistic buzz surrounding for-profit MOOCs by contextualizing and analyzing…

In this reflection, we discuss the connectivist conception of learning in Web 2.0 environments, which underpins the pedagogy of what are known as cMOOCs (connectivist massive open online courses). We argue that this conception of learning is inadequate and problematic, and we propose that cultural psychology is best suited to address the…

The massive open online course (MOOC) is a new approach for teaching online. MOOCs stand apart from traditional online classes in that they support thousands of learners through content and assessment mechanisms that can scale. A reason for their size is that MOOCs are free for anyone to take. Here we describe the design, development, and teaching…

DSGN110 was a multidisciplinary course teaching first year students enrolled in in a variety of majors about design thinking. The course is offered for the majors of architecture, landscape architecture, interior design, community and regional planning, along with computer science and business students. By blending face-to-face and online…

In this Symposium focused on MOOCs, this journal carries forward a tradition of attending to the technologies associated with composing and the teaching of composing. In the May 1983 issue of "College Composition and Communication," for example, most of the articles focus on composing and include a mix of inquiries, from Jack Selzer's on the…