MOOCs, SPOCs, DOCCs and Other Bugs

Abstract

Written from the perspective of an individual lecturer at a European university with no particular know-how in e-learning and online educative devices, this paper aims to understand the MOOC phenomenon that, for a couple of years, has hovered over the field of higher education. A tentative answer is given to the question whether MOOCs will disrupt higher education. It is indeed feared in many corners that MOOCs will hurt non-top universities in favour of the Ivy League institutions by replacing average lectures with the stars of the university celestial sphere. This paper argues that, especially in the European context, such a disruption is highly unlikely. More likely is that MOOCs will evolve into one of the many education tools in higher education.The point is, then, how this evolution can be turned into an advantage. It is argued that having a considerable degree of inter-institutional cooperation would be an asset. Until now, most MOOCs have been developed by single institutions, but it would be an asset for the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) for European-style MOOCs to be developed by European networks of universities (and eventually other partners). Explicit support for this effort should be offered by the Erasmus programme.