Are MOOCs impacting on-campus students? Jul. 2014 | Page 12

traditional ‘information behind the hallowed halls of universities’. It is claimed that
MOOCs will open up education for the world, they have no barriers to entry, anyone
with access to the web can enroll onto them and study online, which will lead to the
end of Higher education institutions as we know them (Koller, 2012b). They are
offered by world class institutions, for example, Stanford, Princeton, MIT and in the
UK, Edinburgh University all have offered these courses, attracting thousands, and
in some cases hundreds of thousands of ‘learners’, via platform providers such as,
Coursera, Edx, Udacity and the UK based Open University’s Futurelearn.
Although there is no fee, learners are awarded a statement of accomplishment to
those who complete the required tasks. The courses are usually around 6 – 10
weeks long and they usually are not eligible for credit. Not surprisingly, businesses,
education institutions, large corporations and governments have been reported to
be enthusiastic about this ‘new’ form of online YX