Open and distance learning (ODL) education is becoming more and more popular. For example in the US it is projected that in 2015, more education will be taking place virtually than on-campus. Due to its flexibility and easy access, online learning is often promoted as a welcoming alternative to traditional education.

The newest trend in this already fairly new development are “Massive Open Online Courses”, also known as MOOCs. MOOCs take flexible and accessible education to another level. These massive online courses are generally for free, offered in English, short and not followed up with an exam.
MOOCs are…

• for free (98%)
• taught in English (86%)
• without exams (80%)
• part-time (51% between 5 to 10 hours per week)
• short (72% from 5-10 weeks)

MOOCs made their first online appearance in northern America after immense popularity of an online course offered by two senior lecturers of Stanford University. Soon many consortia and companies were born, now offering MOOCs in cooperation with leading universities, such as Harvardx, MITx, edX and Udacity.

Who offers MOOCs in Europe?

The popularity of MOOCs is also rising in Europe, where more and more universities join larger consortia and make their knowledge accessible to the world. In April 2013 the first Europe-wide MOOCs initiative, OpenupEd, was launched. Funded by the European Commission and coordinated by the leading European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) which also jointly developed StudyPortals’ DistanceLearningPortal.eu. Starting with 40 courses, OpenupEd continues to grow rapidly, now offering over 160 online courses. Its vision is “to contribute to a process of opening up education as much as is beneficial to the learners, the teachers, the institutions and society, independent of educational philosophy, social-cultural environment, and political flavour.”

Currently, 61% of the MOOCs in Europe are offered by traditional universities, 33% by specialised ODL institutes and 6% by other providers. The UK clearly leads in this field: 27% of all MOOCs in Europe are offered by UK institutions, as well as 64% of the European ODL offer. Germany is catching up, now covering 21% of the European MOOCs offer, followed by Spain (13%) and Switzerland (10%).