Finding relevant MOOCs
There are hundreds of MOOCs on offer. Where can you start?
MOOC List [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] is a directory of courses that allows you to search, for example by provider, category, language, university or type of certificate. Class Central is a very similar portal: you can browse courses that are trending right now, starting soon, just announced, already in progress, as well as future MOOCs. OpenCulture curate a list of MOOCs from Great Universities, arranged by start date and including evergreen courses, which you can take at any time.
If you prefer, you could head directly to some of the most popular English-speaking MOOC platforms:
Or if you'd rather see what's available in other languages, we recommend that you visit OpenUpEd and browse courses in Spanish, English, Turkish, German, Italian, Arabic, Greek, Russian and more. Alternatively, go to the European Multiple MOOC Aggregator EMMA. EMMA provides "a system for the delivery of free, open, online courses in multiple languages from different European universities".
Activity 3.3 MOOC browsing
Visit one of the links provided above and have a look at what MOOCs are available to you. What are your first impressions?
This is what Banjar had to say:
“I started by visiting the Class Central site. Looking at the subject areas, I thought business was probably the best place to start. But business was broken down into so many different categories like finance, management and leadership, marketing etc. I felt a bit overwhelmed and didn’t know where to start. So I thought that what I needed was a course that would introduce me to business but through the lens of the restaurant business. In this way some things would be familiar which would make it easier to study the things that were unfamiliar. But I wasn’t sure how to find a course that would deliver this. So I thought about the industry I’m in, which is the hospitality industry, and I searched in the Class Central site for ‘hospitality.’ I found this really exciting course called The Politics and Diplomacy of Cooking and Hospitality which is on FutureLearn, requiring four hours study a week, and the course is four weeks long. It’s written by the Grenoble School of Management and the Hotel school of Lausanne. I think this MOOC will give me the overview I’m looking for and will steer me to the business skills I need.”
Advantages of taking MOOCs