The Search for the MOOC Credit Hour

摘要

Over the past decade, MOOCs have risen to prominence in part because most do not carry heavy requirements regarding accreditation, scope, and evaluation. While this has allowed MOOCs to proliferate, it has led to difficulty under-standing what completing a particular MOOC means. Individual MOOCs can vary tremendously in their quantity of content, their depth of assessment, and their mechanisms to ensure academic integrity. In order for MOOC credentials to have value in academia and the workplace, however, there must be some trust in what a particular credential means about the learner. In this work, we perform a study to understand the variety of MOOCs available, then pro¬pose a MOOC Content Matrix as a short, objective way to summarize what a particular MOOC entails and, in turn, what value its certificate gives.