Massive online open courses see exponential growth during COVID-19 pandemic
Massive open online classes, or MOOCs, have seen a surge in enrollments since March.
Enrollment at Coursera – an online platform that offers MOOCs, has skyrocketed and was 640% higher from mid-March to mid-April than during the same period last year, growing from 1.6 to 10.3 million. The surge was driven in part by giving free catalog access for 3,800 courses to their university partners. Enrollment at Udemy – another MOOC provider – was up over 400% between February and March. These surges correspond to lock downs across the world as the pandemic started to rage.
As an astronomy professor who teaches and studies MOOCs, I believe there will be a continued shift toward these types of courses as the pandemic forces educators and students alike to rethink the risks associated with in-person...