Not everyone is a fan of Massive Open Online Courses, it seems. 

Even though the availability of free MOOCS is expanding nationwide, 65 faculty, student, teacher and union associations have formed a coalition against them. The group argues that MOOCs are profit-driven and not in the best interest of the students.

Dave Frye, associate director of the Friday Institute at N.C. State, said that despite the formation of anti-MOOC groups, N.C. State is not formally involved in any type of coalition against MOOCs. 

N.C. State’s College of Education offers two MOOCs through the Friday Institute. Frye said the College of Education can use MOOCs to promote its research on effective teaching methods and the use of technology in the classroom.

“Our belief is that there has been a lot of talk about MOOCs, both positive and negative, but it isn’t always informed by research,” Frye said. “We want to inform the broader conversation with research findings from our MOOCs for educators.”

One major complaint from anti-MOOC groups is that large MOOC providers, including Coursera, Udacity and EdX, typically receive large profits from the universities that partner with them. According to a report by the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education. EdX received $60 million from collaborations with MIT and Harvard alone. Frye said the Friday Institute chose not to partner with a MOOCs provider to allow better control over design of their courses and make changes based on research findings. 

According to Frye, the Friday Institute’s MOOCs are not profit-driven, thanks to support from companies interested in N.C. State’s research, including the National Science Foundation and the Oak Foundation. Frye said, aside from the time commitment from researchers, there are few costs associated with developing the Friday Institute’s MOOCs.

“Our MOOCs are part of the research we’re doing. They are a tool to get the College of Education’s research in the hands of teachers and school leaders to ultimately inform education policy and practice,” Frye said.

Frye said that last spring, N.C. State’s Friday Institute launched two MOOCs to help K-12 educators bring digital learning to the classroom. After more than 2,500 educators from 70 different countries participated in the course, the Institute chose to offer the courses again this fall. 

Frye said that while seeking to spread educational research, the Friday Institute is investigating MOOC research at the same time. 

“Part of our motivation is to conduct lending-edge on research on the best way to design and deliver MOOCs for educators,” Frye said. “We want to find out what makes a MOOC useful for educators and what doesn’t, and we want to create a better model for MOOCs to share with others.”

MOOC-eds at the Friday Institute are noncredit courses where educators can decide whether to participate in discussion boards. Potential benefits of MOOCs for students are difficult to determine, according to Michael Maher, assistant dean for professional education at N.C. State.

“MOOCs tend to have very low completion rates, so for the majority of students these would not be a valid alternative to traditional courses. For some highly motivated students they could be quite valuable,” Maher said.