What is a MOOC anyway? Over the last few months I’ve spent a lot of time discussing with a colleague how we can define MOOCs, discussing whether or not we should be creating them, or using them, or are we in fact already doing them?

I read an article that breaks MOOCs down into three types: Content, Task and Network based. Whilst I think this is a good start, I don’t think this is necessarily right. For example, quite a few Coursera courses are very task based as part of the homework.

How many people need to attend or sign up to a MOOC to make it ‘massive’? Udemy is often mentioned as MOOCs but are they?  These platforms openly offer training but are very self paced with little or no collaboration or networking opportunity.

etMOOC is quite obviously ‘massive’ but is it a course? This to me feels more like open source learning through networking. The organisers of etMOOC are bringing everyone together and guiding the conversations. How will they know if people are learning? Will someone be collating all the useful content that people are posting across all the platforms? 

My fear is that the term MOOC has excited people and everyone wants to be in on the game without stopping and thinking about whether what they’re doing is any different to what’s already been done or if it really is a MOOC at all.