Commentary for a Special Issue “Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs)” of the Distance Education Journal Beyond Hype and Underestimation: Identifying Research Challenges for the Future of MOOCs

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have generated enthusiasm, excitement, and hype worldwide and recently increasing skepticism. They are being broadly discussed in the major news media (and to a smaller extent in academic circles). Rapidly increasing numbers of MOOC providers, MOOC courses, and articles, discussion groups, and blogs discussing MOOCs are indicators of the involvement of many stakeholders. Most of these analyses and developments are based on economic perspectives (such as scalability, productivity, being “free”) and technology perspectives (including platforms supporting large number of students in online environments, enrichment components such as forums, peer-to-peer learning support, and automatic grading). Few contributions analyze MOOCs from a learning science perspective and put them into a larger context with other approaches to learning and education. This commentary explores challenges derived from the perspective to conceptualize MOOCs as being one component in a rich landscape of learning.