Open online education is changing rapidly. The first few weeks of 2012 has seen the launch of Udacity, Stanford’s Coursera and the first course offering by MIT’s MITx. In trying to put these developments into context, I’ve drafted a table illustrating key aspects of this evolution in online education, focusing particularly on open online courseware (as opposed to more discrete OERs). This is not meant as an exhaustive catalogue, but simply as a concise summary of recent developments, enabling comparisons. [Table updated 5th March 2012.]

Full table click here:  Online education – a snapshot

(Summary table below the break.)

Image: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 sundaune

Related blog post: Distributed Creativity: open education and challenges for higher education

Summary table:

Institution & programme No. courses available Launched License University credits
MIT – Open Courseware (OCW) 2,100 2002 CC-BY-NC-SA No
Yale – Open Yale Courses 35 2007 CC-BY-NC-SA No
NYU – NYU Open Education 6 2011 CC-BY-NC-SA No
MIT – OCW Scholar 8 2011 CC-BY-NC-SA No
MIT – MITx 1 2012 CC-BY-NC-SA Yes (MITx credit, not MIT credit)
Stanford – Stanford on iTunes U 13 2004 CC-BY-NC-SA No
Stanford Online Courses(no longer available) 3 2011 Copyright – access limited to registered users only Certificate (no credit)
Coursera (still affiliated with Stanford)  16 2012 CC-BY-NC-SA Certificate (no credit)
Udacity (independent of Stanford)  2 2012 CC-BY-NC-SA Certificate (no credit)
MOOCs Massive Open Online Courses 12 2007 CC-BY-NC-SA Yes/No (depends on the MOOC)

6 thoughts on “Online education – a snapshot”

  1. My thanks to Fred Garnett for some great discussion on Twitter this morning, in response to this updated blog post.

    @fredgarnett: Hi Catherine, all big institutions listed there. No #wikiquals Does Open Ed mean access to big universities? Seems so…

    @catherinecronin: Just a piece of the picture, yes! Table = summary of open courseware, part of an awareness process here: und’g & valuing “open”

    @fredgarnett: We say from Access to Content to Context. Always been unimpressed by OCW as not designed for appropriation but for branding

    @catherinecronin: Understand your point. But it’s a version of Open that is understood by HEIs – can start thinking, discussion, movement/change…This is how I started a conversation here: http://ow.ly/9tC5v [Distributed Creativity blog post]. Am now adding building blocks: what’s there, & what’s possible

    @fredgarnett: Love the blog post on distributed creativity; http://t.co/oyCrjavl #openeducationwk

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