In the past three years, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have become an important new way for universities to reach out to possible matriculates, life long learners and alumni. Although MOOCs already cover a vast amount of subjects and curricula, it is remarkable to ascertain the lack of Architectural Design courses on the main platforms like edX and Coursera. Online courses do cover design aspects, e.g. about styles and building materials, but 'design as activity' is an exceptional subject in the portfolio of available MOOCs. In contrast, the CAAD community was one of the first to develop Virtual Design Studio's (VDS) and experimental predecessors of MOOC platforms, such as the AVOCAAD course database system (Af Klercker et al. 2001). Yet, the query 'MOOC' still does not ring a bell in the CUMINCAD publication database (per May 2015). In this paper I will explore a palette of design education settings, in order to find a fit to what a MOOC platform can offer. I will compare the 'MOOC-ability' of Design Education to chances in Virtual Design Studio's and developments in ubiquitous mobile platforms.
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