The term MOOC was coined听 to refer to a course developed by and 别苍迟颈迟濒别诲听 in 2008.听 Their intention was to exploit the possibility for interactions between a wide variety of participants made possible by online tools so as to provide a richer learning environment than traditional tools would allow. 25 students attended the course on the campus of the University of Manitoba, and a further 2300 from around the world participated online. MOOCs with an emphasis on interactions and connectivity are now called cMOOCS.听
In the fall of 2011, Stanford offered three courses for free online.听 and 听offered their to an initial enrollment of over 160,000 students from around the world. Over 20,000 students completed the course. These xMOOCs focused less on interaction between students and more on exploiting the possibilities of reaching a massive audience.听
Thrun founded a company called in February 2012 which began to develop and offer MOOCs for free. In April 2012, and , two other Stanford CS professors, started a company called which partnered with universities in preparing and offering MOOCs.
MIT developed the MITx platform for offering MOOCs, which was renamed edX when a partnership with Harvard was formed. The non-profit which develops and offers MOOCs now has over 30 , including 捆绑SM社区. The consortium has made available an which can be used and developed by other institutions and individuals.听 The consortium also carries out research into learning using new technologies by analyzing data it obtains from students in the courses. Indeed, the consortium is an outgrowth of an earlier MIT project engaged in such research.听
More than 4 million students have enrolled for Coursera MOOCs; both Udacity and edX have enrolled over a million students in their MOOCs. Udacity to offer for-credit courses which were not free but were very low cost and blended MOOCs material with support from on-campus professors and teaching assistants. Such success had
However,听 the , with pass rates in some courses significantly lower in the blended courses than under the traditional model. Furthermore, there is a high dropout rate of over 90% in most MOOCs. In November 2013, and that they would refocus on vocational education. In contrast, , the president of the edX consortium,
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