Business Schools in the Land of the MOOCs

By Colin Nelson

In February of this year, I examined a number of the better-known MOOC provider platforms to see the degree to which management education was getting involved in this new educational space. Platforms examined included Coursera, edX, Udacity, Futurelearn, Canvas Network, and the Academic Financial Trading Platform (AFTP). Nine months on, I decided it was high time for a comparison, to try and see the direction in which business schools are heading with these courses:

Figure 1. Institutions Involved in MOOC Provision (2013)

 

Figure 2. Institutions Involved in Business MOOCs (2013)

Notes: For Udacity and the Canvas Network, courses were frequently offered by instructors as individuals, many with no university affiliation. Because the British MOOC consortium Futurelearn had yet to begin offering MOOCs in February, schools who contribute to the Futurelearn platform were counted only in Figure 1 for that month, but were counted in both Figures 1 and 2 for November.

While I expected that there would be more institutions involved in MOOC provision now, the pace of that increase is less than what I anticipated, particularly given the press that MOOCs have received in the interim.

Back in February, less than 29 percent of all institutions found to be offering MOOCs through one of the above platforms did so in the area of business and management education. Indeed, while the actual number of institutions offering business MOOCs has almost doubled over the past nine months, the percentage of institutions offering business MOOCs actually dropped to less than 21 percent of the total number of institutions offering MOOCs through one of the above platforms. Nevertheless, as the "flipped classroom" becomes more popular as a pedagogical tool, I expect the growth of business education MOOCs will continue. What will be interesting to watch is how (and if) more business schools use them to increase access to management education.

Comments

[Yasmin]

I like this article. Thanks for the posts.

[Chuck Morrissey]

Does AACSB plan to survey accredited schools offering course credit for approved MOOC courses?