Education 2.0 & 3.0

On the 10th anniversary of the first massive open online course, they are more numerous than ever.

In 2008, University of Manitoba professors Stephen Downes and George Siemens taught a course on learning theory that was attended by about 25 paying students in class and by another 2,300 students online for free. Colleague Dave Cormier at the University of Prince Edward Island dubbed the experiment a “massive open online course,” or MOOC.

Since then, this learning mode has been through a dynamic roller-coaster ride. It became an object of much hype (a 2012 New York Times article was titled “The Year of the MOOC”) and then faded from the scene (a 2017 Inside Higher Ed blog post decreed “MOOCs are ‘Dead’”).

Actually, on the 10th anniversary of that first MOOC, they’re still quite alive. “The numbers suggest MOOCs are, in fact, here to stay,” said Arshad Ahmad, vice-provost, teaching and learning, at McMaster University and director of the university’s MacPherson Institute for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching and Learning. Dr. Ahmad also teaches a five-course specialization MOOC called Finance for Everyone.