The MOOC-based degrees trend continues, with edX announcing 7 new Master’s degrees, bringing the total on edX to 9. In a recent article, I explore five key ways MOOC-based degrees differ from traditional online degrees.

Class Central contributor Manoel, who has done his entire higher education online, shares his thoughts on 10 characteristics that could sway him toward one online degree over another.

Udacity is now looking for a new CEO, as Vishal Makhijani has stepped down.

According to Forbes, Coursera is estimated to make $140 million in 2018, a significant increase from Class Central’s 2017 estimate of $100 million.

FutureLearn, which made £8.2M in the last financial year, is now looking to raise £40m to invest in its online degrees.

Two conferences with submissions deadlines next week: Open edX 2019 (San Diego, March 26 – 29) and Future of Learning 2019 (Bangalore, Jan 4-5). More information below.

TOP STORIES

FREE ONLINE COURSES via Class Central
190 universities just launched 600 free online courses. Here’s the full list.

RESHAPING HIGHER EDUCATION via Class Central
According to Delft’s Willem van Valkenburg, MOOCs are already changing higher education in at least four important ways.

MASSIVE REVENUES via Class Central
According to Forbes, Coursera’s estimated revenue for 2018 is $140 million. Forbes also published a feature on Coursera.

NEW CEO via Class Central
Udacity’s CEO Vishal Makhijani has “has decided to move on to new challenges,” according to co-founder Sebastian Thrun.

MOOC-BASED DEGREES via Class Central

With the major MOOC platforms continuing to launch more new degree programs, I decided to compare these new programs with older online offerings. Turns out MOOC-based degrees are different in five key ways.

MORE ONLINE DEGREES via Class Central
In August, Class Central reported that edX had announced it would release 13 new online Master’s degrees. Last month, edX revealed 7 of those Master’s degrees.

OPEN EDX 2019
The Open edX 2019 conference takes place in March 26–29 at UC San Diego. Proposals are due by November 21, 2018.

FOL2019
The Future of Learning Conference (FoL) aims to foster a dialog between academics, entrepreneurs, regulators, and technologists.  The event will be held at IIM Bangalore on Jan 4th and 5th. The deadline to submit abstracts is November 20th.

MOOC PAYWALLS via Class Central
In May, edX announced that they will start testing a support fee. Class Central came across a few different experiments.

UNIVERSAL CREDIT SYSTEM via Class Central
Prolific MOOC-taker Ronny De Winter puts forward a credit system that could be applied to online as well as on-campus education.

MOOC MONETIZATION via Class Central
We explore five different sources of revenue for France Université Numerique (FUN) MOOC platform.

TAKE BETTER NOTES via Class Central
Serial MOOC-taker Pat Bowden shares her tips on how to take better notes.

ACQUISITION via EdSurge
Boston-based private equity firm Devonshire Investors has acquired NovoEd.  NovoEd, originally started as MOOC provider but pivoted to corporate training. More about how NovoEd started here:

The Stanford team behind Venture Lab, founds a company NovoEd to offer collaborative MOOCs

CO-CREATED DEGREES via Times Higher Education
Australia’s Deakin University and Coventry University in the UK are offering a postgraduate course in entrepreneurship on the FutureLearn platform. Fees for the course, which will take a minimum of one year to complete on a part-time basis, will be A$8,800 (£4,900).

MORE MONEY via Class Central
FutureLearn, which made £8.2M in the last financial year, is now looking to raise £40m to invest in its online degrees.

SECOND WIND via The Economic Times
Article in ET India on how MOOCs are faring in the country.

UDACITY LAYOFFS via Techcrunch
According to TC, Udacity has laid off 5% (atleast 25 employees) since August. According to Udacity, this was done for strategic reasons.

As Governor, I'm committed to funding 10,000 nano-degrees for anyone ready to take the next step in a career- all you'll have to do is work in OH when you're done! This is a start to addressing our workforce shortage & getting people into good paying jobs https://t.co/tsNUAsPcon

— Mike DeWine (@MikeDeWine) October 25, 2018

MOOCs ON CAMPUS via EdSurge
In certain universities like Duke and Michigan, on-campus students

SELF-DRIVING CARS via CIO
RMIT has partnered with Udacity to offer a course on self-driving cars.

MOOC MILESTONES

• Chinese MOOC platform XuetangX has crossed 14 million students. The also offer 700 credit courses with more than 2 million registered university students who use them, mainly from SPOC platforms.
• MIT’s Introduction to Computer Science and Programming using Python has crossed 2 million enrollments.
• Marketing in a Digital World, a Class Central Top 50 MOOC has attracted 526,000+ learners, 154,700 active learners, and 13,200 course completers.
• Erasmus University Rotterdam’s Econometrics MOOC has crossed 1000+ completers out of 85,000+ enrolled learners.
• The Effect of Fires on People, Property and the Environment from University of Maryland crosses 2000 enrolled learners.

YIDAN PRIZE via MIT News
EdX CEO Anant Agarwal has been awarded the Yidan Prize. According to the official website, “Yidan Prize Laureate receives a gold medal and a total sum of HK$30 million (around US$3.9 million) including a cash prize of HK$15 million (around US$1.9 million) and a project fund of HK$15 million.”

LINKEDIN LEARNING via Techcrunch
LinkedIn Learning will now offer videos, tutorials and courses from third-parties such as Treehouse and the publishing division of Harvard Business School

MOOCWatch is a monthly digest of information related to MOOCs meant for professors and administrators, or others who are involved in education and want to stay up-to-date in the MOOC space. In addition to broad coverage, MOOCWatch also contains unique data sourced from Class Central (such as course popularity rankings). Subscribe to MOOCWatch here.