Trend Report: Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC)

There have been many stories prophesying changes in how we learn with technology. ’MOOC’ could be one of them or it might turn out to be a real game changer. Some initially weak signals become more central and turn mainstream over time, others not. Great ideas cannot thrive by themselves; research, development, evaluation, deployment, procurement are activities planned and performed by interdependent groups (pursuing connecting interests), together with stakeholders this forms a highly complex and dynamic ecosystem. With an abundance of information available, it often is difficult to separate noise from important weak signals and false prophets from those who should be listened to. With this report, the TELmap project tries to corroborate weak signals and rising trends in technology-enhanced learning with supporting evidence. The reports try to identify key forces and drivers as well as barriers and obstacles. TELmap is funded by the European Commission within the EU’s 7th framework programme. Parts of this report are generated from data. The subsequent sections will indicate whenever they are basing analyses on data. One important resource thereby is the TELmap Mediabase, which is a collection of more than 83.294 blog posts from 562 blogs, collected since November 7, 2006.