Anuar Andres Lequerica is Class Central’s analyst.

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In the MOOC-news this month: Arabic MOOC platform Nadrus has reached 100,000 students, French MOOC platform France Université Numérique has reached 500,000 students, and Brazilian MOOC platform Veduca has reached 800,000 students (there’s also 700,000 Brazilian MOOCers on Coursera).

Furthermore, the University of London has reached 1 million enrollments on Coursera, openSAP has also reached 1 million enrollments, FutureLearn has reached 3 million students, and Udemy has reached 10 million students.

MOOC providers are expanding the types of services and courses that they offer. Udacity added a cheaper version of its Nanodegrees and will now offer career services as well; Coursera launched mentor-guided MOOCs and project-based MOOCs.

Top Stories

NANODEGREE LITE via Class Central
Udacity starts offering a cheaper version of its Nanodegree. It costs $79/month but does not include the 1:1 perks of the regular Nanodegree.

MOOCS WITH MENTORS via Class Central
Coursera starts offering mentor-guided MOOCs for $248.

PROJECT-BASED MOOCS via Coursera
Coursera launches 12 project-based MOOCs in topics from persuasive writing to computer construction.

NUMBER OF NON-MOOC ONLINE STUDENTS GROWS via eCampus News
There has been a year-to-year 3.9 percent increase to 5.8 million students. More than one in four students now takes at least one online course (without counting MOOCs).

INDIA PLANNING MOOCS FOR CREDIT via The Economic Times
The University Grants Commission has been asked to formulate a credit framework. Over 500 credit-granting MOOCs from India’s top universities are planned.

TEN MOST POPULAR MOOCS via Class Central
The best new courses starting in February 2016.

MOOC COURSE REPORT via Class Central
A list of 650+ free online courses starting in February 2016.

New MOOCs via Class Central
The list of 300+ new courses added to Class Central in January 2016.

MAKING MOOCS MORE INCLUSIVE
There has been a new study on how many elderly people do MOOCs, as well as new events and initiatives to make MOOCs accessible to individuals with disabilities.

IJMR-Elderly Learners and Massive Open Online Courses: A Review | Liyanagunawardena | interactive Journal of Medical Research
How Online Learning Helps Persons with Disabilities | IREX – Civil Society, Education and Media Development
Online learning team to make courses accessible – The GW Hatchet

ANALYZING MOOCS
Talking of studies, there have been new studies on student persistence patterns in MOOCs, the structure of MOOCs, and MOOCs’ impact on the amount of education pursued overall.

Project MUSE – Persistence Patterns in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)
Exploring Course Structure at HarvardX: A New Year’s Resolution for MOOC Research | edX 

Can MOOCs Increase Access to Education?

MOOC PROVIDERS PARTNER WITH CORPORATIONS
AT&T has partnered with Udacity to train its employees. Meanwhile, Coursera is set to prepare course modules for 12,000 Axis Bank employees. The global corporate e-learning market is predicted to reach close to $31 billion by 2020.

Gearing Up for the Cloud, AT&T Tells Its Workers: Adapt, or Else – The New York
Axis Group ties up with education aggregator Coursera to train employees – The Economic Times
Global Corporate E-learning Market to Reach over USD 31 Billion by 2020, says Technavio | Business Wire

INTERVIEW-LESS HIRING via Udacity Blog
Flipkart, India’s largest online marketplace, is hiring employees based directly on their Nanodegree projects and Udacity profiles.

MOOCS FOR REFUGEES
edX has partnered with a Berlin-based open education startup to offer refugees credit-granting MOOCs. Along similar lines, Google has donated 25,000 laptops to refugees, in order to enable them to take MOOCs.

New Partnership with Kiron Enables Thousands of Refugees to Receive College Credit Online | edX Blog
Google Donated 25,000 Laptops To Help Refugees Get Fresh Start

About MOOCWatch

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). To subscribe to MOOCWatch visit classcentral.com/moocwatch

Anuar Andres Lequerica is Class Central’s analyst. He has a graduate degree in education policy and has taken at least eight online courses across all the different platforms.