Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): A Primer for University and

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs):

A Primer for University and College

Board Members

By Brian D. Voss

An AGB White Paper

March 2013

This paper is based upon a presentation given to the board of directors of the Association of Governing Boards

of Universities and Colleges. Mr. Voss is the vice president and CIO at the University of Maryland’s agship campus

in College Park and also a member of the EDUCAUSE board of directors, serving as vice chair for 2013.

MOOCS: A PRIMER FOR UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE BOARD MEMBERS | I

Is This Time Diﬀerent? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

A Primer on MOOCs ............................................................................. 3

How MOOCs Work .............................................................................. 3

What Remains to Be Seen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Issues to Consider ............................................................................... 6

The Key Challenges ............................................................................. 6

Issues for Boards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Appendix I: The Online Learning Landscape ........................................................ 13

Appendix II: Key Online Terms and Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Additional Articles .............................................................................15

Bibliography and Other Sources of Information ..................................................... 27

Table of Contents

An AGB White Paper

March 2013

MOOCS: A PRIMER FOR UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE BOARD MEMBERS | 1

In 2011, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Stanford University, and the University of

Michigan joined forces to oﬀer free courses online. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard

University came together to do the same in 2012. That partnership has expanded to include a number of other

institutions, including the University of California at Berkeley and Wellesley College. The collaboration of such

name-brand institutions has sparked increasingly greater interest among higher education leaders and the

public in such massive open online courses or MOOCs, as they are called, and in online education in general.

As boards seek to grasp the signiﬁcance of MOOCs and their impact on colleges and universities, they

should focus on two fundamental ideas. First, while information technology (IT) is the medium through which

disruption of the academic enterprise is taking place, that disruption is not about IT. IT is an enabler of almost

every aspect of life in the 21st century—on our campuses, in our workplaces, and in our homes. But what is

most important for higher education is the transformation of teaching and learning. The “techies” are indeed

backstage, making things happen, but the “stars” on the stage are the faculty and instructors.

This revolution is

not about IT. It is about teaching and learning.

Second, although MOOCs have grabbed the headlines and rightfully become the focal point of the

disruption under way in higher education, we must not think of them as the be-all and end-all in online

education. We should think of a spice rack: MOOCs are just one spice among many online-education spices,

and colleges and universities (and faculty members through their pedagogy) will employ many spices to make

the perfect academic creation for consumption by students. While this paper will concentrate on MOOCs, it is

important to at least be aware of those other “spices” that institutions will probably use or consider in 2013 and

going forward. (To read more about the broader context of online education in which MOOCs are operating and

other types of online oﬀerings, see Appendix 1.)

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs):

A Primer for University and College

Board Members

An AGB White Paper

March 2013

2 | AN AGB WHITE PAPER: MARCH 2013

Indeed, the environment in which MOOCs and other forms of online education operate is changing virtually every day. This white

paper is an eﬀort to give board chairs, presidents, and others some context to help guide discussions on their own campuses. But to stay

abreast of this rapidly shifting landscape, you should regularly visit continually updated sources of information, such as that provided by

The Chronicle of Higher Education to its subscribers in its “What You Need to Know About MOOCs” microsite (See box on page 12.)

IS THIS TIME DIFFERENT?

The chief information oﬃcers (CIOs) of the members of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), a consortium of Big Ten

universities plus the University of Chicago, prepared a brieﬁng in late 2012 about the MOOC phenomenon for their provosts and

presidents, posing the question:

Is this time dierent?

That question was based on the premise that, over the past decade, online

education has moved ahead relatively slowly with ﬁts and starts—that the disruption that is changing higher education institutions

and pedagogy has been more evolutionary than revolutionary. And the CIOs concluded that, indeed, the answer to the question is an

emphatic

YES! To quote their view: “The eﬀect on residential universities relative to previous experiences and events in the arena will be

profound and long-term.” A report by the Education Advisory Board, “Promise and Perils of Innovation: Competitive Challenges to the

Traditional Higher Education Model” (September 9, 2012), supports that perspective.

Meanwhile, Kevin Carey, director of the education policy program at the New America Foundation, has postulated in the

Washington Monthly magazine (August 28, 2012)

that before this decade is out:

■

The “parallel universe” of an online-age education will reach a point of sophistication and credibility where the degrees

granted—or whatever new method is invented to mean “evidence of your skills and knowledge”—will be accepted and taken

seriously by employers.

■

American colleges and universities will start to feel real pain.

■

Political pressure will continue to grow for credits earned in low-cost MOOCs to be transferable to traditional colleges.

■

Proﬁt margins that colleges have enjoyed in providing more-traditional education will shrink.

■

Colleges with strong brand names and other sources of revenue will emerge stronger than ever, but everyone else will

scramble to survive as vestigial players.

Only time will tell if such predictions are correct. Right now, for nearly all involved, MOOCs are still an experiment, a proverbial

toe in the water. The institutions involved thus far are prestigious, the faculty renowned and motivated, and the topics largely hand-

picked by the institutions, the MOOC entities, or both in concert. The participating colleges and universities have stated that they believe

their involvement with these initial eﬀorts will extend, enhance, and preserve their institutional reach, brand, and reputation.

Is This Time Diﬀerent? Questions for MOOCs and Online Learning Beyond 2012. Committee on Institutional Cooperation, Council of Chief Information Oﬃcers.

http://www.cic.net/Libraries/Technology/Is_This_Time_Diﬀerent_CIC_CIOs.sﬂb.ashx.

The Siege of Academe. Kevin Carey, Washington Monthly, September/October 2012.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2012/features/_its_three_oclock_in039373.php?page=all.

MOOCS: A PRIMER FOR UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE BOARD MEMBERS | 3

Yet the viral nature of MOOCs has been apparent through the rapid growth of providers, participating (signiﬁcant) institutions,

faculty members involved in providing courses, students enrolled, and other measures. And MOOCs are starting to exhibit the second

trend desired by their startup investors: They are sticky. That is to say, they don’t seem to be going away. More courses are being

added, more faculty members and students are becoming involved, and each passing month demonstrates that, thus far, MOOCs are

not a 2012 ﬂash in the pan. We may have crossed a Rubicon of sorts; it now appears that online education may truly disrupt, in

unprecedented ways, more-traditional approaches to higher education.

A PRIMER ON MOOCS

So what exactly are MOOCs, and how do they work? And what speciﬁc issues should boards be considering?

How MOOCs Work

MOOCs use Web-based tools and environments—referred to as

platforms—to deliver education and classes in a new paradigm

without regard for geographic boundaries and time zones and to much larger audiences—in fact, tens of thousands of students.

As the box above outlines, various MOOC entities own these platforms.

One of the key diﬀerences between MOOCs and the previous online approaches is that MOOCs are free. Students can take

the courses at no charge. The pedagogy that MOOCs employ also diﬀers signiﬁcantly from “traditional online learning.” Learning is

accomplished via a “ﬂipped classroom” model, whereby the instructor employs the Internet and other technologies to allow students

to gain knowledge that used to be delivered via a lecture format and then use time in the classroom to work on problems together.

Some of the Better-Known MOOCs

Coursera (www.coursera.org) was started by two Stanford professors (Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng). The

company created an environment, built a learning platform, and subsequently engaged more than 30 university

partners in developing course content. (As of January 2013, more than 200 courses will be oﬀered.)

edX (www.edx.org) began as a partnership of Harvard and MIT and, as of December 2012, had expanded to include

the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Texas System, Wellesley College, and Georgetown University.

It will be oﬀering 15 courses in Spring 2013.

Udacity (www.udacity.com) was started by Stanford Professor Sebastian Thrun with Mike Sokolsky and David Stavens,

and then joined by University of Virginia Professor David Evans. It is oﬀering about 20 courses in Spring 2013.

Udemy (www.udemy.com) was founded by Eren Bali and Oktay Caglar, who have built a platform that invites

individuals (rather than institutions) to oﬀer online courses.

4 | AN AGB WHITE PAPER: MARCH 2013

The instructor can in turn then act more like a tutor walking among the students rather than a sage on the stage performing a

monologue. MOOCs allow scaling of that approach to massive proportions, using social networking tools so that students help

educate each other, as well as computerized assignments and assessments.

Unlike older forms of online learning, MOOCs are not asynchronous; they are not like recorded class sessions that a student

listens to at his or her own pace sitting in a library, completing one lesson and then starting a subsequent one. Rather, they are similar

to on-campus courses,

delivered synchronously on a deﬁned schedule—usually on a weekly calendar basis. A student in a far-ﬂung

location may take a particular lecture and do the related exercises in his or her own time zone during a convenient window of delivery.

A student may also make up for missed lectures at his or her convenience, although that will lessen the impact of some aspects of the

cohortlike approach to learning with fellow students.

With MOOCs, lectures are also structured diﬀerently. Rather than simply capturing a a 45- or 60-minute lecture delivered in a

traditional classroom and making it available online, faculty members record

lecture modules tightly focused on various topics, lasting

perhaps

12 to 15 minutes at most. One reason for that short duration is to allow students to “squeeze in” the content-delivery modules

in convenient blocks of time during the synchronous window.

Imagine the working parent couple taking a course together: One parent gets the kids ready for bed while the other parent

consumes a short, focused lecture module, and then the other parent does likewise as the ﬁrst parent actually puts the children to bed

and reads them a story. And then both parents independently undertake the discussion sessions, exercises, and assessment elements

associated with the module as their schedules permit. In other words, this module approach was designed to help students ﬁt their

education conveniently into the gaps of time in their busy lives.

Exercises, assessment devices (quizzes or tests), and grading are automated within the platform. For more-subjective,

content-oriented exercises, students may “grade” each other via discussion forums and social-networking interactions. Of course, many

questions about how assessment works and how “grading” is possible must be addressed. But there is no need to do so immediately,

because students can take the MOOCs at no cost, and no certiﬁed value for their learning assessments has yet been established. As a

result, the focus has been on the new MOOC approach itself and its potential impact on the way we deliver higher education.

MOOCs are demonstrating the ability to provide access to education on a massive and international scale. Most students now

enrolled in MOOCs are

global—outside the United States. Most are also older, nontraditional students who use MOOCs for continuing

education objectives; they are not students currently enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate program. Students who take MOOCs

today appear to be doing so either as an “experience experiment” or as a way to augment their previous education for skill-enhance-

ment purposes or personal self-actualization. But that balance could shift at any moment, as the uses of MOOCs to enhance existing

educational programs develop.

MOOC providers are already capturing a great deal of data about the classes and learning processes currently under way, and

analytics on these data vis-à-vis the learning experience of MOOCs are emerging. That data and analysis will very likely play a major

role in the ultimate value proposition of MOOC companies (and potentially their participating institutions) by enabling those companies

and institutions to market the data that they’ve gathered to interested parties. Venture capital investors in MOOCs do eventually want

to get a return on their investment in the $1-trillion market that is education.

Flip Teaching (aka the Flipped Classroom). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_teaching

WHAT REMAINS TO BE SEEN

We don’t know what impact MOOCs will have on pedagogy or the learning model. Obviously, within the conﬁnes of MOOC platforms

and approaches, the way that faculty members structure and deliver courses has changed. But as faculty members experiment with the

ﬂipped classroom, will these MOOC-inspired approaches also catch on in non-MOOC settings? What will be the impact of the MOOC

model on students? Will the self-directed nature and “cohort coeducation” approach of a ﬂipped classroom work well for everyone—

or not?

It is true that, thus far, the number of students who drop out of MOOCs is huge: If 100,000 students enroll in a course, perhaps

fewer than 5,000 students complete it. That is an interesting factoid, however, because while a 5 percent success rate is appalling,

moving 5,000 students through a given course in one teaching is phenomenal. What is also not clear is whether or not MOOCs might

actually improve traditional graduation rates, as students are able to “load up” on courses without regard to the logistics of setting up a

workable class schedule. That is another hidden—and potentially quite positive—impact.

Also, becoming viral and sticky may not be enough to sustain the multimillion-dollar investments in MOOC entities in the past

two years. At some point, business models must emerge along with answers to the question:

Are MOOCs nancially sustainable? Educa-

tion is a $1-trillion market and growing, as new areas of the world seek ways to educate their populations. So funding is there, but how

will MOOCs access it? And will it involve the transfer of existing revenue from current providers or the creation of new revenue? These

are fundamental questions, and only time will provide answers.

Right now, no standard business model for MOOCs exists. Every passing month, however, new possibilities emerge—and will

continue to emerge—for how MOOCs can make money for their providers and the institutions that employ them. Some of those

possibilities include:

■

Charging for certication: requiring students to pay for documentation that they actually gained knowledge and skills

through the courses.

■

Charging for assessment and credit: ramping up certiﬁcation broadly, up to and including course credit and even degrees.

In essence, the value equation to the student is to pay tuition and fees to get credit, yet avoid the associated living costs and

either speed up the time it takes to graduate or extend it to align with the demands of their jobs and families.

■

Data mining: selling the data about students and their performance in classes (with or without formal certiﬁcation) to

potential employers looking for talent. That could also include providing access to the best and brightest students around the

world to institutions. Imagine ﬁnding the next Stephen Hawking in the slums of Bangalore or the remote countryside of China.

■

Cross-selling/up-selling: using the platforms as a way to reach students about products related to what they’re studying

or to oﬀer more advanced and certiﬁed course oﬀerings.

■

Advertising: sending targeted advertising to the users of the system in the same “old” Internet way that Google oﬀers free

Gmail, or that Facebook allows all that usage at no cost, through sponsored ads.

■

Write in your idea here: Creative minds could develop many diﬀerent business models for MOOCs by which everyone—

MOOC providers, institutions, faculty members, students, and society in general—might beneﬁt.

MOOCS: A PRIMER FOR UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE BOARD MEMBERS | 5

6 | AN AGB WHITE PAPER: MARCH 2013

ISSUES TO CONSIDER

We are still in the early days of MOOCs. In addition to questions about the business model and pedagogical impact, other issues

should be addressed:

■

Intellectual Property. Who owns the course? What about scholarly works and the materials used in the course? How do the

massive and open elements of MOOCs inﬂuence “fair use” claims on copyrighted materials?

■

Identity and Credit. Once a student completes a MOOC, how do colleges and universities go about ensuring that he or she

has really learned something and earned the credit? Perhaps institutions and MOOC entities will develop partnerships with

testing centers and veriﬁcation technology companies.

■

Open courses, certications, credits, and degrees. MOOCs are catalyzing exploration of alternative credentialing systems,

and traditional institutions should carefully consider how MOOCs ﬁt into their degree programs.

Some colleges and universities are asking themselves: What is our institution’s capacity to deliver MOOCs? Are we positioned to

undertake the eﬀort and costs to do MOOCs right? But relatively few institutions have the resources to invest in high-quality MOOCs,

even with the support of a Coursera or Udacity. Now and for the coming year, colleges and universities—and their boards—should

address several other key questions:

Where do MOOCs t into the institution’s eLearning strategy? Are MOOCs a “spice” to be added to the institution’s spice rack?

And if so, how?

How should we determine what, if any, credit to give to students who take MOOCs? How can we assess what students

learn from MOOCs, and for what courses in particular should they receive credit? The American Council on Education recently

announced that it would endorse certain MOOCs for credit, although the ﬁnal decision on what credits to accept rests with

each degree-granting institution.

What does the presence of MOOCs in the market mean for our institution? This is a hard question, and one that may be

instilling fear in some institutions. Often mentioned is the concern that students may be tempted to take courses via MOOCs

and other forms of online education oﬀered by more-prestigious institutions rather than the traditional or even online

oﬀerings of less well-known colleges and universities, and that this may eventually drive some of them out of existence.

There is no easy answer to that concern. It will require direct, frank, and honest discussion at each institution. Kevin Carey

provides his opinion on this in his Washington Monthly magazine article, and I encourage using it as a springboard for

opening discussion of this disruptive and discomforting question.

THE KEY CHALLENGES

To reiterate the fundamental ideas that I presented at the outset of this paper: This is not about IT. But IT deﬁnitely matters! IT is the

mechanism that is enabling the disruption, and an institution must have a fundamentally sound and strategic approach to IT. In these

early days of what is shaping up to be an online revolution (including MOOCs), IT leadership is often tapped to lead institutional forays

into this area. But a question looms: Can IT get oﬀ the stage and go backstage where it belongs?

MOOCS: A PRIMER FOR UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE BOARD MEMBERS | 7

This IS about a new approach to pedagogy. Technology, trends, and broad actions in the market are disruptively changing

teaching and learning. That is beyond the control of faculty members and academic leaders. And often their tendency is to examine

this as an academic experiment—to study it and wait for outcomes.

But as we’ve seen in disruptive events in a variety of markets, time is of the essence. Those who insist on simply watching

and waiting may be passed by. Faculty members must understand that online learning is a new approach to pedagogy and

embrace its possibilities. Academic administrators— chairs, deans, provosts, and presidents—must also embrace the change

and encourage a constructive response.

And what about board members? They can be instrumental in helping these two groups embrace change, but not by use

of a heavy hand or making matters worse by fostering a clash of cultures. Instead, board members can become actively involved in

the campus discourse with faculty members and administrators by asking questions and fostering a thoughtful dialogue—one by

which they diligently and openly face the challenges together.

In IT circles, the term “business process engineering” means that advances in technology allow enterprises to not just

automate the status quo, but also to actually change the process and, one hopes, improve it. In this case, the process is teaching and

learning. To date, much of what we’ve done with IT and technology in higher education has been simply to use it to automate the

processes that surround the administration of courses. What is happening now, however, is that technology is allowing the teaching

and learning processes themselves to be changed—to be re-engineered. That is the true challenge our institutions face today, a

challenge that MOOCs are illuminating brightly.

As a CIO at a major ﬂagship research university and vice chair of the EDUCAUSE board, I would share the following opinions

and perspectives:

■

It will take a signiﬁcant investment in “humanware” over the rest of this decade to transform the way teaching is delivered—

either blended, totally online, or somewhere in between. (See box on page 8.) No one is going to invent a perfect device or

platform that transitions faculty members overnight from the old way to a new one. Many other people—course designers,

multimedia specialists—will have to provide support. Whether that eﬀort is managed centrally by a senior administrative

leader or distributed across the existing administration—and how it is facilitated—are matters of institutional culture.

■

The academy must lead the change. Provosts, deans, chairs, and faculty members must embrace it. In most instances,

IT people can play the role of collaborators, supporters, and enablers of the process of change (not to mention instigators of

change), but it cannot be viewed as an “IT thing” along with all the other IT things facing nearly all campuses now.

■

There will be a lot of discussion and debate about whether MOOCs and other forms of online teaching and learning actually

improve learning outcomes. Whether or not they do is strictly academic (and not IT/technical). And not necessarily relevant!

Remember the music industry and the debate about sound quality vis-à-vis CDs versus MP3s? CDs were “higher ﬁdelity” and

judged to be superior in terms of quality. But MP3s were fairly close in quality and vastly more “ﬂexible” in their nature. As a

result, they have been adopted as the standard for most forms of music distribution and use.

8 | AN AGB WHITE PAPER: MARCH 2013

The CIOs at the Committee on Institutional Cooperation have recommended that the leaders of their member institutions

consider several near-term actions:

■

Engage purposefully in trials of MOOCs, adaptive learning systems, and emerging technologies to develop institutional

understanding. Formulate a long-term strategy for professional development, MOOCs, courses for credit, and full degree

programs.

■

Carefully analyze emerging business models for revenue-generating, free, and partnered courses. Incorporate costs

for campus services and systems.

■

Ramp up institutional capacity for online course production and increase resources to support instructional design, media

development, assessment, and analytics.

■

Develop IT system readiness to integrate with a range of educational software that may need to link to campus information

systems in ways that are legal, secure, and compliant with campus policies.

ISSUES FOR BOARDS

If we accept that this time is diﬀerent, then colleges and universities must take action now. Boards can play key roles in how their

institutions deal with the challenge of online education and MOOCs. But boards must realize that the presidents, administrators,

and faculty members of their institution are at a point of signiﬁcant tension and should consider how to aid them rather than simply

challenge them to act.

Faculty members’ opinions run the spectrum as to the proper approach to online education, but many are anxious about the

advances in it and the use of technology to improve blended learning environments. They worry about the level and speed of change

required and how they, as individuals, will transition from their existing approach to pedagogy to a brave new world. And some faculty

members are skeptical about the motivations of institutional leaders, including board members, for pursuing online learning.

The Importance of Humanware

Everyone is well aware of information technology terminology involving hardware and software, and even network-

ware. They have long been established in the IT revolution as elements that institutions and individuals should invest

in. We all know we need to buy computers and devices (hardware), and that these electronic devices are made to work

by programs called software. And with the Internet, we’ve come to understand that the network itself is another “ware”

requiring our investment and involvement. But what often gets lost in a world where we buy hardware, software, and

networkware is that none of this can really be of full use without people—humanware—to help the users of the

various wares get value from them. Technology is a wonderful and wondrous thing, but without the humanware to

guide and support it, we never will obtain technology’s full value.

MOOCS: A PRIMER FOR UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE BOARD MEMBERS | 9

Further, no magic technological wand can be waved that will make all this change easy and quick. This process will be

resource-intensive—not only in terms of investments in IT infrastructure (hardware and software), but also in people who must help

guide the transition. A recent view expressed by one of the leaders of the MOOC movement was that moving a given course into

the MOOC format requires a full-time course designer to support the faculty member. Eﬃciencies will certainly be found, but going

forward, colleges will need to rebuild academic support resources that may have been reduced during the past ﬁve years of budget

retrenchment. There will be a direct, proportional relationship between the investment in human capital resources and the quantity

and speed of change at an institution.

It is naive to believe this can all be done quickly, cheaply, and without impact to existing environments and funding models

at traditional colleges and universities. If an institution is considering getting into this market using existing resources, it should carefully

examine the investments that competitors in the MOOC realm are making: millions of dollars and thousands of hours of collective

humanware. Boards must grasp that fact and then help their institutions’ leaders also understand it.

Indeed, boards should engage now with their presidents and other senior administrators. These engagements should be

signiﬁcant and supportive, and done with an understanding of the between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place position into which this

revolution has placed institutional leaders, especially faculty members. Boards are certainly focused on institutional brand and prestige,

revenue and market protection and enhancement, and cost containment and reduction. However, if these are viewed as the business

reasons for adapting IT-enabled changes to the process of teaching and learning, resistance will be signiﬁcant and trust will be slow

in coming between the faculty and the board—with the presidents and administrators stuck in the middle. Boards should openly

acknowledge and grapple with the cultural issues within their institutions and work actively and supportively with faculty members

and administrators to address the challenges presented by this disruptive change.

The Committee on Institutional Cooperation CIOs have posed a number of questions for discussion on campuses. Boards should

look to this list of questions and help their institutions have the critical and important discussions needed to advance change:

■

What kinds of online experiences are needed as substitutes for current models, and/or as complements for current models?

■

How—and why—does scale matter? Should there be a focus on massive courses versus smaller ones? Whole programs versus

a course-level focus? For-credit and fee courses versus noncredit and free courses?

■

What is lacking at the institution to achieve online objectives? What must be put into place strategically, tactically, and

operationally to advance success?

■

What kinds of partners are needed, and why?

■

What is the degree of urgency? Are there issues that should be addressed sooner as opposed to later?

■

Should a central leader coordinate online initiatives—such as a vice provost or special assistant to the president?

■

What are the ramiﬁcations of a more central approach to IT infrastructure and services? Is it time to centralize more-pedestrian

IT support and infrastructure elements so that staﬀ members can focus on the advanced need to support faculty in redesign or

re-engineering of pedagogy?

Boards should inquire about the actions that their institutional leaders are taking or plan to take concerning online learning

in 2013. They should encourage those leaders to thoughtfully engage in national developments and gain experience ﬁrsthand in the

advances occurring now in higher education. Finally, boards should continue to monitor this fast-changing situation as it develops

and invest time in becoming conversant in the complex issues and challenges that must be addressed.

MOOCS: A PRIMER FOR UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE BOARD MEMBERS | 10

Appendices

An AGB White Paper

March 2013

MOOCS: A PRIMER FOR UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE BOARD MEMBERS | 11

APPENDIX I: THE ONLINE LEARNING LANDSCAPE

Before focusing on MOOCs, boards should have a good understanding of the broader universe of online education today. For example,

traditional online institutions have, for many years, oﬀered various forms of IT-enabled online education classes and degree programs.

These include:

■

Western Governors University (www.wgu.edu): Online, non-proﬁt, competency-based university oﬀering more than 50

bachelor’s, master’s, and post-baccalaureate degree programs in the key workforce areas of business, information technology,

K–12 teacher education (including initial teacher licensure), and health professions, including nursing. Enrolls more than

33,000 students nationwide.

■

University of Phoenix (www.phoenix.edu): Online and on-campus, for-proﬁt university with more than 200 locations oﬀering

associate, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees to more than 300,000 students.

■

University of Maryland University College (www.umuc.edu): One of 11 accredited, degree-granting institutions in the

University System of Maryland and with locations in the Washington, D.C., area as well as Europe and Asia. Oﬀers more than

100 graduate and undergraduate degree programs online to more than 90,000 students.

In addition,

online learning providers—colloquially referred to as “universities in a box”—essentially act as outsourcing

entities, allowing institutions to quickly oﬀer complete online courses and degree programs without having to invest in institutional

infrastructure. Under the banner of the institution, these providers typically oﬀer a complete line of services, including marketing

and student recruitment, student admission, enrollment, faculty course design and support services, and course hosting and

Internet services. In many cases, they also oﬀer 24/7 support. Examples of these providers today include: EmbanetCompass

(www.embanetcompass.com) and 2Tor (www.2u.com), which built its initial oﬀerings by selecting exclusive partners by program

(for example, only one MBA program/institution, etc.).

This “full service” model allows an institution to provide online programs without any impact on the existing campus

IT infrastructure, course design, or faculty and student support resources. However, this model comes at a cost: To obtain a return

on their infrastructure and support investments, the companies take upward of 75 percent of the revenue and usually require

long-term (ﬁve-year) provision agreements. While that percentage may seem steep, the students who are enrolled in those programs

tend to be completely outside the recruiting pool for traditional on-campus enrollment—in other words, they wouldn’t have attended

anyway. Thus, such ﬁnancial arrangements can often provide purely marginal income with little up-front investment or ongoing cost

to the institution.

In addition to these online ventures, adaptive learning platforms/providers oﬀer focused education programs and

skills-development courses. The most widely known are Knewton (www.knewton.com) and Khan Academy (www.khanacademy.org).

MOOCs News Resources

The Chronicle of Higher Education oﬀers regular news and updates about MOOCs at “What You Need to Know About

MOOCs” at http://chronicle.com/article/What-You-Need-to-Know-About/133475

Also, see its blog, “The Wired Campus: The Latest News on Tech and Education” at http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus

12 | AN AGB WHITE PAPER: MARCH 2013

APPENDIX II: KEY ONLINE TERMS AND CONCEPTS

Boards should also understand some of the pedagogical terms and systems used in online education today. For example, blended

learning is a term that essentially means augmenting traditional classroom education with various forms of online learning. Elements

of the “spices” described earlier might be oﬀered as part of the delivery of traditional courses, allowing students access to materials,

elements, or exercises presented outside of the classroom and traditional recitation sessions. Blended learning is increasingly popular

with both faculty members and students because it uses technology to give students additional content and allows them to work in

a medium (online) that they are increasingly more comfortable with—and often prefer. It also lets faculty members, when working

face-to-face with students, focus less on content delivery and more on content analysis and discussion, as well as on assessing what

students have actually learned.

Learning-management systems (LMS), originally developed in the 1990s as a part of early eﬀorts to advance online education,

provide the IT structure and platform upon which faculty members can build their pedagogy. Professors and students discovered that

these tools—which automate the process of course delivery and content presentation using IT—were quite valuable in improving

traditional classroom pedagogy. Many colleges and universities developed their own in-house learning-management systems during

that decade, and some spun oﬀ those systems into commercial oﬀerings—such as Blackboard (from Cornell University) and Angel

(from Indiana University). Today, the main commercial providers include Blackboard and Desire2Learn; many other companies were

either bought out by Blackboard or went out of business.

In the past decade, as costs for LMS have skyrocketed and competition has been eliminated, this market has seen the rise

of open-source and community-source platforms, such as Moodle and Sakai, to compete with the commercial systems. The new

platforms have become increasingly popular among institutions of all types and sizes.

A recent entry into the LMS market, Instructure’s Canvas product, is available to institutions as an open-source product, as

well as in a “cloud” version. In this “hybrid” model, institutions can elect to take the code freely (though it is not clear how well it is

supported by other users in the community) and host it on their own campus IT infrastructure (servers), or they can use a version

oﬀered by Instructure (for a fee based upon the size of the institution) and delivered to their campus users via the Internet. Colleges and

universities that have adopted either the open/community-source tools and the Instructure cloud approach have signiﬁcantly reduced

the costs of providing LMS, allowing them to invest such savings—if they are wise enough to do so—in other forms (spices!)

of online learning.

Note: Some of these LMS providers are moving into the MOOCs market, suggesting that their platforms can host MOOCs. This

remains to be seen in practice, especially for the commercial providers, due to licensing requirements that may signiﬁcantly increase the

costs of some LMS options.

MOOCS: A PRIMER FOR UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE BOARD MEMBERS | 13

Additional Articles

An AGB White Paper

March 2013

What Campus Leaders Need to Know

About MOOCs

EDUCAUSE

An EDUCAUSE Executive Brieﬁng

MOOCs (massive open online courses) are courses delivered over the web to potentially

thousands of students at a time.

While MOOCs have captured the interest of many, the business models and return

on investment are still evolving.

Currently most MOOCs rely on traditional lecture approaches; students must self-

organize study groups or discussion.

Institutions may experiment with MOOCs as a brand extension; others must determine

how MOOCs ﬁt their instructional portfolio.

MOOCs may catalyze new approaches to credentialing.

assive open online courses—MOOCs—

are online courses that are free and

open to anyone, with essentially

unlimited enrollment.

How MOOCs Work

MOOCs are online courses where lectures are

typically “canned,” quizzes and testing are auto-

mated, and student participation is voluntary.

They attain large scale by reducing instructor con-

tact with individual students; students often rely

on self-organized study and discussion groups.

An alternative model allows students to vote on

which questions should rise to the professor’s

attention (e.g., Coursera). edX encourages stu-

dents to rely on each other, awarding “Karma

points” to students who correctly answer other

students’ questions. As points accrue, students’

roles can expand, e.g., to a teaching assistant.

Initial MOOCs have often been from disciplines

that lend themselves to quantitative assessment,

such as engineering, computer science, and

math. However, MOOCs are becoming applicable

to all ﬁelds as the platforms enable assessment

methods such as peer review. MOOCs generate

massive quantities of data about learner behav-

ior, which can be used to understand cognitive

growth and how to improve instruction. Some

platforms may evolve from course-delivery

systems toward adaptive learning platforms—

systems that personalize the experience based

on the learner’s performance.

MOOCs embody a convergence of technology

and culture that is creating new energy around

e-learning. On the technology side, the tools

enabling web-based instruction are more eec-

tive and reach greater scale than ever before.

E-learning technologies that are widely used in

MOOCs include:

The New Players

MOOC Platforms

Coursera: A Stanford spino focusing on

elite institutions and faculty. Major university

partners include University of Virginia, Duke

University, University of Pennsylvania, and

University of Illinois.

edX: The Harvard, MIT, and Berkeley collabo-

ration to oer the best of all three institutions

free online.

Udacity: Disseminates select MOOCs in part-

nership with individual professors. Founded

by ex-Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun

after his MOOC went viral.

Udemy: Allows anyone to create and oer a

course, whether free or for a fee.

Adaptive Learning Platforms

While not MOOCs, Knewton and Khan

Academy oer massively online material.

As students work, these platforms track and

correlate data generated—from time of day

to clicks and response patterns—to person-

alize instruction. Ultimately all platforms may

use data to adapt instruction to the learner.

educause.edu 2

 High-quality indexed video

 Data capture and analytics

 Delivery platforms that combine the qualities of

social networking sites like Facebook with the con-

tent delivery, discussion, and grading functions of

the traditional learning management system

From a cultural perspective, communication,

collaboration, and knowledge discovery via the

web have become commonplace. Sites like TED,

Khan Academy, iTunesU, and YouTube, which

house rich collections of instructional material,

have paved the way for MOOCs.

The Current Value Proposition

Education Access

MOOCs provide access to education on a mas-

sive, international scale. Currently, most students

who enroll in MOOCs are internationals and/or

professionals rather than enrolled college stu-

dents. This balance may shift as institutions

develop models for integrating MOOCs into stu-

dents’ educational pathways. MOOCs provide

instruction, but they also highlight the institu-

tion by featuring renowned professors. MOOCs

can be used as primary or supplementary course

material for instructors who wish to weave them

into their curricula.

Experimentation

MOOCs represent an experiment in education

that attracts talented instructors, technologists,

and entrepreneurs. Many institutions are exper-

imenting with MOOCs to inform instruction for

large undergraduate courses. Commercial MOOC

partners host sophisticated application platforms

that mine click-stream data, which can be used to

reﬁne adaptive systems and tutoring algorithms

that enhance learning eectiveness.

Brand Extension

MOOCs can extend the institution’s reach and

reputation internationally. Particularly among elite

research institutions, MOOCs have become a way

of enhancing the institution’s brand and signal-

ing innovation. Successful professors can gain a

global following, building their own reputation—as

well as the institution’s—and creating new oppor-

tunities for collaboration.

What Remains to Be Seen

Business Model

There is no standard business model for how

MOOCs will generate revenue. Venture capital

and philanthropy have funded platform providers

such as Coursera and edX. Currently, institutions

and MOOC platform providers each bear their

own costs and split any future revenue. Revenue

opportunities include:

 Data mining: Sell student information to poten-

tial employers or advertisers.

 Cross- or up-sell: Course materials (e.g., videos)

are freely available, but ancillary services like

assignment grading, access to the social net-

works, and discussions are fee-based.

 Advertising model: Courses have named sponsors.

 Tuition model: Students pay the originating

institution for course credit.

 Spin o/licensing model: Sell the course, parts

of the course, or customized versions of the

course to institutions or businesses for their

internal use; license institutional use of the

MOOC platform itself.

Pedagogy

Today’s MOOC presents largely traditional

instruction: lecture segments (often video), read-

ings, and quizzes. The MOOC instructional paradigm

works best for self-directed learners. Typically, only

a fraction of enrolled students complete the course,

and an even smaller subset (e.g., 5 percent) pass.

However, options are likely to expand as MOOC

pedagogy and technology matures.

Issues to Consider

Intellectual Property

are currently responsible for clearing copyright

and for copyright violations when they partner

with commercial MOOC providers. Copyright

management of course materials can pose a

Who Is Oering MOOCs?

Primarily oered by high-prestige name-

brand universities, MOOCs are often

taught by high-proﬁle faculty on popu-

lar and diverse topics. The list of American

institutions oering MOOCs is growing

exponentially. New institutions jump into

MOOCs seemingly every week. To date, 22

of the institutions listed in US News’ top-25

best-colleges rankings for 2013 oer MOOCs

or similar free oerings, including Harvard,

Princeton, Yale, Columbia, MIT, Stanford,

Duke, University of Pennsylvania, Cal Tech,

Dartmouth, Northwestern, John Hopkins,

Brown, Rice, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Emory,

UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, UCLA, and

University of Virginia. Prestigious schools in

Canada, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and

Australia also are oering or planning to

oer MOOCs.

educause.edu 3

EDUCAUSE is a nonproﬁt membership association created to support those who lead, manage, and use information technology

to beneﬁt higher education. A comprehensive range of resources and activities are available to all EDUCAUSE members.

For more information about EDUCAUSE, including membership, please contact us at info@educause.edu or visit educause.edu.

challenge. For example, educational fair-use

claims are unlikely to hold when courses are

open, and few can aord to license content

when students number in the hundreds of thou-

sands. Also, traditional institutional practices

toward scholarly works might not apply because

MOOCs may represent a signiﬁcant university

co-investment, potentially involving a substan-

tial, ongoing infrastructure contribution.

Terms and Conditions. The “terms and condi-

tions” of commercial MOOC companies require

close scrutiny. Some commercial MOOC platforms

have highly proprietary terms and conditions that

claim ownership of course content and prohibit

sharing or remixing of material. Not all MOOCs

should be assumed to be “open.”

Identity and Credit

If credit is to be oered for a course, the iden-

tity of the student becomes important. While

enrollment can be open, the student cannot

be anonymous. The use of testing centers or

other proctoring arrangements is one answer.

Technology solutions that model the “ﬁngerprint”

of an individual’s online behavior or monitor the

student and surrounding environment are another.

Open Courses, Credits, and Degrees

As new models for access, learning, and

certiﬁcation become more common, institu-

tions will face decisions about course credits

and degrees. Students already have access to

courses from many providers, but not all are

accepted for credit or count towards a degree.

MOOCs are catalyzing exploration of alternative

credentialing systems, including certifying prior

knowledge. How MOOCs ﬁt in an institution’s

degree program is still being determined.

Three Questions Leaders Should Ask

Why jump on the MOOC bandwagon?

Possibilities include: for outreach and exper-

imentation, to extend the brand, and to gain

institutional experience with emerging forms of

instruction. Ultimately MOOCs may become a

source of revenue to drive down costs while open-

ing access to learning.

What is our institutional capacity to

deliver a MOOC?

MOOCs require investment. Whether the MOOC

is self-hosted or oered through a commercial

platform, integrated course support is required.

Support requirements include:

 Technical (e.g., videography, editing, graphic

design)

 Instructional (e.g., instructional design, teaching

assistant support)

 Library (e.g., resource discovery, copyright

clearance)

Institutions intending to self-host MOOCs will

need a sophisticated, highly scalable LMS-like

platform, the ability to eectively market the

courses, and the capacity to oer technical sys-

tem support remotely and at scale.

Where do MOOCs ﬁt into our institu-

tion’s e-learning strategy?

MOOCs should ﬁt in the overall portfolio of

course oerings. Do they complement or substi-

tute for current course models? And if MOOCs are

not an option, will faculty with stature, conﬁdence,

and teaching experience go outside the institution

to oer a MOOC?

Credit for MOOCs

Most MOOCs are oered as noncredit

courses. While some American univer-

sities award “badges” or certiﬁcates of

completion, to date only Colorado State

University’s Global Campus has agreed to

provide students full transfer credit toward

a CSU bachelor’s degree for an introduc-

tory computer science MOOC. They must

earn a “certiﬁcate of accomplishment”

from Udacity, the company supporting the

course, showing that they passed, and then

pay $89 to take a proctored examination

also oered by Udacity through a secure,

physical testing center.

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EDUCAUSEreview

J A N UARY/FEBRUARY 2013

[Today’s Hot Topics]

viEwPOINTS

Viewpoints Department Editor: David Lassner

MOOCs: Get in the Game

n July 2012, John V. Lombardi (someone I have admired for

nearly three decades and came to know personally during

our shared time in Louisiana) wrote that investing in Massive

Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as the “next big thing” in

higher education is largely about institutions trying to “seek

visibility and preeminence to validate their claims of significance

and advertise their association with the latest educational trends

and enthusiasms.”

Lombardi was spot-on in assessing that these

“free” courses are by no means free and that many questions

remain to be answered. However, I would argue that there is

value in institutions sticking their proverbial toe in the MOOC

waters, as my own institution—and scores of others—have done

via Coursera and other MOOC efforts.

In the EDUCAUSE 2012 session “MOOCs: The Coming Revo-

lution,” which I presented with Coursera’s co-founder Daphne

Koller, I opened my portion by emphasizing that the current IT-

driven disruption is not actually about information technology

but is, rather, about pedagogy. I’ll take this opportunity to state

my view again: the focus of this disruption should be on teach-

ing and learning. However, I believe that there is value in having

the IT organization take an active role in helping the institution

to embrace this change, even going so far as to move onto “point”

for change. I believe the move by my institution, the University

of Maryland (UMD), into Coursera perfectly illustrates why insti-

tutions—and IT leaders and organizations—should get involved

with some form of MOOC initiative at this time. I see two pri-

mary reasons, along with a third, more fundamental reason

beyond those two.

First, there are opportunities available. The current “name-brand”

MOOC entries are still interested in developing content-

providing partners: Coursera has expanded twice, growing

from its original four partners to thirty-three as of December

2012; edX has grown from the Harvard-MIT founders to include

the University of California–Berkeley, the University of Texas

System, Georgetown University, and Wellesley College.

Second, this is what leading institutions do. As UMD President Wal-

lace Loh said, we stick our necks out (in the metaphor of our

mascot, the terrapin). Presidents and provosts at all levels of insti-

tutions are, if not under pressure, certainly being encouraged by

their boards, legislatures, donors, and others in the community

to take action. They are also being pushed by their own faculty,

who are eager to give MOOCs a try.

Third, and more fundamentally important, actively participating may

be a better way to learn than simply watching from afar. I believe we’re

at a point of change, where information technology not only is

useful for automating the status quo in teaching and learning

but can be truly transformative in the evolution of pedagogy

(perhaps rapidly) to a “flipped classroom” model. By actively

engaging in these start-up efforts, we bring the lessons directly

to our campuses and, more important, to our faculty and our

academic staff who must assume leadership for how our colleges

and universities embrace online and blended education.

Institutions that take a responsible approach and make a rea-

sonable investment of time and resources to get a few courses into

a MOOC environment can benefit by seeing things up-close and

personal. The debate about all aspects of MOOCs is only getting

started; it will become even more robust as more data on experi-

ences emerges and as more people join the discussion.

Being

“in the game,” rather than simply watching from the sidelines,

provides a better set of insights to inform that robust debate. We

will be able to use our own experiences to judge what our unique

institutions do rather than basing our decisions on the experi-

ences and views of others who are not us.

Although UMD is still in the early days with MOOCs, I can

share our experience to date:

Contracting with the provider. Working out our contract with

Coursera was not overly challenging. I’ll credit that to the

flexibility of Coursera and its understanding of the concerns

of higher education institutions. The agreement is not secret,

with many of them available for perusal online, including

UMD’s.

Choosing the course offerings. Recruiting faculty and selecting

courses was a task of winnowing to a reasonable number

from a large set of quality offerings (rather than hunting for

volunteers). Today, we have a steady flow of faculty who are

interested in being “in the next wave,” and our first Coursera

offerings won’t debut until early spring of 2013. In fact, at this

time, our biggest challenge involves how to deftly and sensi-

tively say “No, not just now, maybe later” to an increasingly

eager and ambitious number of faculty.

Preparing the courses. Here, we are still gaining knowledge. The

first to-do with Coursera involved creating the “course land-

ing pages” (like “trailers” for a coming-attraction movie). This

was revealing on many levels, including the need to establish

better video support services (we used our University Rela-

tions studio and talent) and also support for our faculty on

“being ready for their close-up.” What we’re only now starting

to understand is how much goes in to actually preparing the

course “modules”: Coursera’s structure encourages faculty-

led “imparting” sessions of 12 to 15 minutes, augmented

with associated assignments, discussions, and assessment

J A N UARY/FEBRUARY 2013

EDUCAUSE review

www.educause.edu/ero

By B RIAN D. V OSS

exercises to create learning modules delivered via its online

platform in a synchronous approach.

The challenges we’ve exposed in our process have illumi-

nated a broader set of questions:

What is this new approach to pedagogy? There is a definite need for

a better understanding on the part of faculty of what the new

paradigm of pedagogy means to them. Many faculty may come to

the discussions thinking of the current model of IT enable-

ment in blended and online learning, which is largely one

of using information technology (learning management sys-

tems and their many attendant parts) to automate the process

of course delivery, with little impact in the classroom or in the

curriculum. Coursera’s approach is challenging this model

and is opening up what may be a renaissance in faculty mem-

bers’ approach to teaching (and students’ approach to learn-

ing) in a 21st-century IT environment. What we have here is

a new way to apply an old IT term—Business Process Reengi-

neering—to the fundamental business of our universities.

MOOCs are “it,” right? The focus on this “next big thing” has

often been viewed as a search for what might be called the

Highlander Model

—that is, there can be only one, and MOOCs are

the one. Of course, MOOCs are just a single tool in the online

education toolbox. We need to stop thinking in terms of a

MOOC revolution and instead think in terms of teaching and

learning revolution, of which MOOCs are just one (currently

very disruptive) element.

Do we need another administrator? A critical challenge is the

shortness of time to act. Events are transpiring quickly, and

the revolution in online education may not patiently wait for

the evolution of our institutions in terms of how our faculty

and scholarly support structures respond. Several leading

institutions have decided that there is value in a senior-level

position (e.g., vice provost, special assistant to the president),

not necessarily to take ownership of all facets of online educa-

tion but to coordinate the process by which an institution can

quickly evolve its collaborative activities.

What is the role of information technology? Many observers, includ-

ing me, argue that MOOCs are not really about information

technology and are not something that should be led by the

IT organization. That said, as the debate rages in the academic

divisions and the cabinets of our institutions, the IT orga-

nization is well positioned to take a “recon” role—that is, to

establish a beachhead, or a pilot, or a furtive first experiment

or discussion. I’m sure I’m not the only CIO to be called by

the president or provost when the MOOC events began to

unfold. This makes sense: those of us in information technol-

ogy are well positioned to contribute in turbulent times. Our

challenge will be how to do so and then how to relinquish

the point position when the academic divisions are ready

to assume their rightful place leading this charge into our

future.

In his blog post, Lombardi advises colleges and universities

to watch and wait until the leading institutions have experi-

mented and developed a viable strategy that can deliver value

(from MOOCs) to their communities. He further cautions that

governing boards should exercise caution in demanding trendy

responses from their institutions and that it is often best to

observe, study, and evaluate and to perform a cost-benefit analy-

sis before jumping onto the next big thing. This is sound advice

for many, to be sure.

But I would argue that we can better do these things—includ-

ing learning about these new environments, platforms, and

processes so as to apply their value in the broader blended and

online initiatives we undertake, well beyond MOOCs—by tak-

ing an active role rather than simply watching and waiting. We

should be in this game, and actively so. Our higher education

institutions are about creating, sharing, and preserving knowl-

edge. By taking an active role in the MOOC revolution, we are

fulfilling the first, to the benefit of the second.

Notes

1. John V. Lombardi, “The Next Big Thing,” Reality Check (Inside Higher Ed blog),

July 23, 2012, http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/reality-check/next-big

-thing#ixzz2EaNNSQ00.

2. See, for example, Doug Guthrie, “Jump Off the Coursera Bandwagon,”

Chronicle of Higher Education (Commentary), December 17, 2012.

3. “Online Course Hosting and Services Agreement,” http://www.president.umd

.edu/legal/frpdpdfs/coursera_contract_2012.pdf.

4. On the Highlander movie, see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091203/.

Brian D. Voss is Vice President and Chief Information Officer at the Uni-

versity of Maryland.

Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

by-nd/3.0/).

MOOCS: A PRIMER FOR UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE BOARD MEMBERS | 22

Bibliography and Other Sources

of Information

An AGB White Paper

March 2013

MOOCS: A PRIMER FOR UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE BOARD MEMBERS | 23

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