Abstract
Born out of an altruistic desire to make quality higher education accessible to millions of learners around the world, massive open online education has lately come under increased scrutiny over its goals, uses and effects, while at the same time spurring academic debate on general educational issues such as curricular design, course delivery, the educator's role, student participation and retention, student engagement and motivation, student performance and evaluation. The present paper analyzes both the benefits and the disadvantages of massive open online courses (MOOCs): on the one hand, it looks at the MOOCs as salutary ways of democratizing higher education by providing free top quality courses delivered by personalities of today's academic world to interested learners in remote parts of the world, especially in developing countries, who may otherwise not have access to them. On the other hand, it considers the negative aspects of this new education model, with an emphasis on the implications of the "massive" element of MOOCs, the most significant of which is the frequently criticized "homogenizing" effect of massive open online education, its universalistic tendency to ignore students' diverse (academic, cultural, ethnic, social) backgrounds and proficiency levels that shape or determine their online engagement and performance. Given the characteristics of MOOCs, the paper also identifies the areas of study that are most suited to massive open online teaching and learning, and analyzes the applicability of massive online education to philological subjects. Finally, it considers the prospects of using massive open online education as an alternative to traditional higher education in Romania.
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