To MOOC Or Not To MOOC?

In recent years, Massive Open Online Courses, also known as MOOC, have become popular. Let’s take a closer look at the MOOC education.

First and foremost, MOOCs offer people an opportunity to take quality courses, further their education, and achieve goals without having to pay thousands of dollars.

Since MOOCs can be taken openly by anyone who has internet access. They are mostly asynchronous. Most MOOCs are broken into 5 minute segments followed by multiple choice questions. Because many learners find this style boring to say the least, the average dropout rate is about 90 percent. While most MOOCs are not interactive in nature, truly motivated learners can obtain the needed skills, which allow them to move up the career ladder or get a step closer towards a higher-paying job.

Some of the leading universities including Yale, MIT, and Harvard are now offering MOOCs in all areas ranging from Literature, Medicine, and Business, to Computer Science. While most of these MOOCs are designed to help students obtain new knowledge and skills, some begin to offer certificates. Furthermore, many colleges begin to recognize these open courses and let students submit the MOOCs for credit recognition.

Many agencies outside of academia also find these open source courses beneficial as they allow employees to acquire new knowledge without spending corporate money. All in all, regardless of the fact that many people are against these free courses, they can be truly valuable to those who do not have money for expensive university education as well as to businesses and corporations.

Below is a list of the top 5 sites that offer MOOCs in different areas of interest:

1. Udemy www.udemy.com
2. Carnegie Mellon Free Courses http://oli.cmu.edu/
3. edX https://www.edx.org/
4. Coursera https://www.coursera.org/
5. Udacity https://www.udacity.com/

Some of the leading universities that offer MOOCs include:

1. Stanford Free Courses https://online.stanford.edu/courses
2. MIT Free Courses http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
3. Harvard Free Courses http://www.extension.harvard.edu/open-learning-initiative
4. UCLA Free Courses https://www.uclaextension.edu/online-courses
5. Yale Free Courses http://oyc.yale.edu/