Hundreds of thousands of students around the world are signing up to ‘massive open online courses’, or MOOCs. These are short educational programmes delivered free of charge over the internet by major educational establishments such as Stanford, Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). European universities are now getting in on the act, with institutions in the Netherlands and the UK the latest to announce MOOC initiatives.

Using the internet for distance-learning is nothing new, nor is giving away teaching material. More than 20,000 courses can be found online through the open-courseware movement, including written material, lecture videos and practice tests. But this goes only so far. “Open courseware is content, and content is not the same as education,” says Anka Mulder, director of education and secretary-general of Delft University in the Netherlands, and also president of the Open Courseware Consortium.

The courses are highly structured, typically lasting five to eight weeks, with set start and end dates. Video lectures are concise and supported by tests, with students who pass a final online exam receiving a certificate from the university. “It is starting to look much more like education as we know it,” says Mulder.

Each MOOC creates a community of people simultaneously studying the same material. Using this community to provide peer support improves the learning process while minimising the burden on tutors. Therefore, MOOCs can be open to all, with no entry requirements or restrictions on class size. Some have attracted more than 100,000 registrations, even though the final certificates usually have no formal value within the university system.

European institutions first got involved through Stanford’s Coursera platform, and universities in London, Edinburgh, Leiden and Lausanne now use it to offer courses in computer science (a mainstay of MOOCs) and other topics, such as psychology and equine nutrition. Delft is among the latest to take the American route, announcing in February that it would launch three MOOCs this year on edX, a platform run by Harvard and MIT. These will cover solar energy, water- treatment engineering, and aerospace engineering.

Raised profile

In common with many European institutions, Delft sees MOOCs as a way of experimenting with new teaching methods while raising its international profile. “That will be next step for many universities: to see how you can improve the quality of your campus education, but also how you can teach people online,” says Mulder. “We don’t believe that we will make money on MOOCs, but we also don’t believe that MOOCs will be the last stage in this development.”

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For example, in September Delft will build on one of its MOOCs by launching an accredited online water- management degree that will cover its costs through tuition fees.

While US platforms give European institutions a higher profile, some prefer to go their own way. The UK’s Open University, a distance-learning specialist, has set up Futurelearn to host MOOCs from 16 British institutions. Courses will begin in the second half of 2013.

Amsterdam University has also decided to act independently, after being told it would have to wait six to nine months for a slot on Coursera. “We didn’t want to stay away too long,” says Arie den Boon, organiser of the eight-week communication science MOOC. The course began on 20 February with more than 2,000 registered students. Once again the motivation is to experiment with new ways of teaching. “It is a lot of work. It is much more time-consuming than we expected,” says den Boon.

The European Commission’s position on MOOCs will become clearer with the publication of a policy for opening up education later this year.

Supporting a European MOOC platform would be an obvious first step. “There is absolutely an opportunity for the European universities to set up something themselves,” says den Boon.

Ian Mundell is a freelance journalist based in Brussels.