Year of the MOOC
Year of the MOOC is the label widely applied to 2012, when Coursera, edX, and Udacity launched or gained major visibility and media coverage treated free massive open online courses as a potential disruption of higher education.
- Year
- 2012
Key events included the January 2012 launch of Coursera, the announcement of Udacity, and the May 2012 announcement of edX by MIT and Harvard (building on earlier MITx work). Dozens of universities joined the platforms within the year. Completion rates for free courses proved low, and most platforms later shifted toward paid certificates and degree partnerships. The phrase captures both the peak of public attention and the subsequent recalibration of expectations.
2012 marked the moment when open online courses moved from experimental projects to a widely discussed institutional and commercial category.
In a New York Times article, Pappano ( 2012 ) declared 2012 as 'the year of the MOOC '.
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