MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are the latest addition to the acronym-bound lexicon of higher education, and quite possibly the most significant of them all. They represent a new generation of online education, freely accessible on the internet and geared towards very large student numbers.
The phenomenon has been likened by the president of Stanford University to “a digital tsunami”, threatening to sweep aside conventional university education. Whether or not the rise of MOOCs will prove to warrant such hyperbole, there is no doubt that something very important is happening in the global system, raising profound questions about the very nature and future of higher education.
