Presentation at the 2015 HOME conference in Rome, Italy on November 30, 2015.

1. MOOCs in the News:
A European Perspective
Vitomir Kovanović, Dragan Gašević, Srećko Joksimović,
The University of Edinburgh,United Kingdom
George Siemens
University of Texas at Arlington, USA
Marek Hatala
Simon Fraser University, Canada
v.kovanovic@ed.ac.uk
@vkovanovic
http://bit.ly/wow2015news http://vitomir.kovanovic.info

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“Disruptive Change”
“Tsunami is coming”
“Year of the MOOCs”
MOOCs have put a spotlight on online education:
We should make a best possible use of that!
MOOCs Revolution

3. Gartner Hype Cycle
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4. Gartner Hype Cycle: MOOC case
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2015
2014
2012
2013

5. What public media reveals about moocs?
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● What media reports about MOOCs?
○ What is the hype about?
○ What is the social/economic impact of MOOCs?
○ Were to focus research efforts?
○ What are the opportunities/challenges?
○ What are the upcoming MOOC trends?
Kovanović, V., Joksimović, S., Gašević, D., Siemens, G., &
Hatala, M. (2015). What public media reveals about MOOCs: A
systematic analysis of news reports. British Journal of
Educational Technology, 46(3), 510–527. http://doi.org/10.
1111/bjet.12277

6. ● We identified 93 different MOOC-related topics
● Hype is passing
● Media coverage is decreasing
● Many business publications report about MOOCs
● News about MOOC providers among most reported
● Criticism focused on “failed revolution”
● Increasing coverage of worldwide adoption of MOOCs
○ (China, India, Australia, California)
● MBA MOOCS, Government-related MOOC topics, and use of
data & analytics among among rising trends
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What public media reveals about moocs:

7. 30 most prominent topics
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8. Observation 1: MOOC providers
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9. Observation 2: Regional adoption/use
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10. Observation 3: Rising trends
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11. MOOCs in the News:
A European Perspective
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12. MOOCs in the News: A European
Perspective
● Basically, repeat the study with a focus on Europe-related
MOOC news
● We identified 915 articles about European MOOC happenings
● We discovered 43 different MOOC-related topics
● We followed the same approach as Kovanović et al. (2015a)
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13. How many articles were published?
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76
341
296
200

14. Who wrote about MOOCs?
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15. Frequency of different topics
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Topic change of coverage over time

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Top 3 topics

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Top 3 topics headlines
● FutureLearn
○ FutureLearn serves up first course online
○ Futurelearn reveals big plans to deliver Moocs on the move
● MBA MOOcs
○ MBAs and MFins: Think a management degree is out of your reach? Think again
○ Business schools face challenges of technological advances
● MOOC revolution
○ Get a Harvard ‘degree’ from your home
○ Welcome to the brave new world of Moocs

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Country-specific

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Country-specific headlines
● MOOCs in Ireland
○ Irish universities must learn the valuable lessons of an online age
○ Trinity goes digital with free online course; Six-week Massive Open Online Course in history ‘not a
substitute’ for university
● MOOCs in France
○ French Universities Go Online With Moocs
○ EdX to Work with French Ministry of Higher Education to Create National Online Learning Portal

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Rising topics

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Rising topics
● openSAP press releases
○ SAP Offers New, Free Online Classes on SAP(R) Business Suite powered by SAP HANA(R),
Sustainability and Rapid Deployment
○ SAP Encourages the Spread of Knowledge with Free Online Classes
● MOOC research reports
○ Investigators from Glasgow Caledonian University Report New Data on Open and Distance Learning
Higher Education; Reports from University of Oxford Add New Data to Findings in Higher Education (
● MOOCs for training
○ Mass online courses could help transform the future of training
○ Why promotion is just a click away;
● MOOC markets
○ Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Market 2015-2020: mEducation, Distance, Open & e-Learning in
Higher Education & Enterprise
○ Global Massive Open Online Courses Market 2014-2018: Key Vendors are Coursera, edX, Udacity and
Udemy

23. Summary
● Total of 915 articles identified and found 43 topics
● Reported primarily in educational venues, also in financial
● Three most prominent topics: FutureLearn, MBA MOOCs, and “MOOC revolution”
● Ireland & France frequently discussed
● openSAP, MOOC reports, MOOCs for training, MOOC market frequently discussed.
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24. Recommendations based on results
● Many calls for changes in education
● MOOCs attracted a lot of attention by the general media
● We should focus on issues identified in public discourse
● Make best possible use of the current momentum in online education
● Role of government & use of MOOCs for training seem very promising directions
● They are not a revolution but an evolution of long tradition of online education
● MOOCs are not dying out, but are not going to replace more “traditional” forms
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25. Interested in (Online) Education, Data, MOOCs?
Join us in Edinburgh on April 25-29 2016
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ACM Learning@Scale (April 25-26 2016)
Learning Analytics & Knowledge (April 25-29 2016)
learningatscale.acm.org
lak16.solaresearch.org

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Thank you
v.kovanovic@ed.ac.uk
@vkovanovic
http://bit.ly/wow2015news http://vitomir.kovanovic.info