In case you missed it, on Friday Sylvia at MOOC News & Reviews put out Part 6 of her around the world tour of MOOCs: “MOOCish” Online Ed Resources. It’s not a short read, but it’s conversational and it’s worth your time.
She touches on the issues of classifying MOOCs, as well as on what we’ll call “MOOC creep” — the sometimes unfortunate tendency to call any old instance of online education a MOOC.
And that’s where folks like us come in: the “MOOClatives” (her word, not ours, but hey…we’ll take it). So, what sets us apart from the MOOC providers and from “the other big three (or four)”? Well, our courses are complete, asynchronous, and openly-licensed; not necessarily massive at any given time but organized into full college-level majors; certificated at no cost; and — we’re pretty darn proud of this — several of our courses are connected to real, actual, portable, affordable college credit. You’ll certainly see some of these points elsewhere, but taken as a package, we’re fairly unique.
But we’re also in really good company with the other MOOClatives, which include collaborative learning sites, resource repositories, courseware providers, and plenty more. And because of how we design and build courses, we’ve had the opportunity to draw upon materials from many of the organizations that Sylvia outlines, among them:
- Khan Academy
- iTunes U (we also host several dozen courses there)
- Curriki
- MIT OCW
- Open Yale Courses
- CMU OLI
- Lynda.com
Long story short, whether you’re a student looking for open learning just off the beaten path or an educator looking to pull in learning resources, MOOC Around The World, Part 6 has you covered.
Photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography via photopin CC BY 2.0