User perceptions and experiences of massive online open courses

Open education is transforming academia by empowering communities to share learning materials, and is opening up teaching practices beyond the classroom (1). In the last few years, massive online open courses (MOOCs) have emerged and become the focus of attention. These free courses are evolving in two distinct pedagogic forms: the connectivist (cMOOC) that has grown out of an informal networked approach to learning, and the structured, content-based MOOC delivered on large-scale platforms (xMOOC), often with significant amounts of commercial backing (2).