"A massive open online course (MOOC) is an online course aiming at large-scale participation and open access via the web. MOOCs are a recent development in distance education using open educational resources. They are similar to college courses, but typically do not offer academic credit. Other forms of assessment or certification may be available including those based on Learning analytics for online environments. MOOCs originated within the open educational resources (OER) movement and connectivist roots. Several MOOC-type projects have emerged independently, such as Coursera, Udacity, and edX.[1] Others, like Canvas Network and CourseSites by Blackboard Inc have evolved from learning management systems. MOOCs gained significant public attention in 2012 due to the prominence of MOOC project founders and contributing institutions, as well as the large financial investment designed to make e-learning more scalable and sustainable.[2]
MOOCs have at least two key features:
Open access. MOOC participants do not need to register as students and are not required to pay a fee.
Large scale. Traditional courses have a smaller ratio of students to teacher, but MOOCs are designed to have a "massive" number of students.
Other features associated with early MOOCs, such as open licensing of content, open structure and learning goals, community-centeredness, etc. may not be present in all MOOC projects".[3]