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The Future of MOOCs Must Be Decolonized

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So much so, the New York Times even dubbed 2012 the “ Year of the MOOC.” Advocates for the courses would point a finger at the unaffordability of traditional education, promising that MOOCs could offer cheaper, more innovative alternatives. But what on earth could be neo-colonial about free online education?

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2U Buys edX for $800M, In Surprise End to Nonprofit MOOC Provider Started by MIT and Harvard

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The nonprofit will also “explore promising new ideas for making online learning more effective, engaging and personalized,” said Reif in his letter. For me, the big story here is this continued consolidation of market leadership in online learning,” he added. Scale matters, and the big are getting bigger.”

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Will the Pandemic Lead More Colleges to Offer Credit for MOOCs? Coursera is Pushing for It.

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When two Stanford University professors started Coursera in 2012, the focus was on building free online courses to bring teaching from elite colleges out to the world. But the pandemic has forced those selective colleges to embrace online learning like never before, and now all types of colleges are teaching online.

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Harvard and MIT Launch Nonprofit to Increase College Access

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What would you do if you had $800 million to build a new nonprofit to support innovation in online learning? The $800 million underpinning the effort derived from a controversial decision by the two universities in 2021 to sell their edX online learning platform to 2U.

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More MOOC Madness? UK’s FutureLearn Raises $65M to Expand Global Footprint

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Less than a week after its announced lead in Coursera’s $103 million Series E round , SEEK is at it again with £50 million (about $65 million) in London-based MOOC platform FutureLearn. This funding is “vindication for Open University betting on a MOOC platform, for investing in a non-U.S. audiences).

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Much Ado About MOOCs: Where Are We in the Evolution of Online Courses?

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A lot has changed since 2012 or, the year the New York Times dubbed the "Year of the MOOC." The premise back then was that classes would make high-quality online education accessible for all—and for free. Today, many MOOC providers now charge a fee. But the big change in 2018 was MOOC-based degrees.

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Online Learning Platform, NovoEd Acquired by Boston Private Equity Firm

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Boston-based private equity firm Devonshire Investors has acquired NovoEd , a San Francisco-based provider of an online learning platform. NovoEd traces its roots to Stanford University, where engineering professor Amin Saberi and Farnaz Ronaghi, then a PhD student, launched their first online course in 2012.