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Mastering MOOCs
Book

Mastering MOOCs

Using Open Online Courses to Achieve Your Goals

Karl Ulrich
Wharton Digital Press, 2015

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Prestigious universities offer many, top-flight massive open online courses (MOOCs), and most of them are free to the public. MOOCs are a new and exciting development in distance learning. Now you have access to the level of education offered at top universities and to classes such as Contract Law: From Trust to Promise to Contract and Fundamentals of Neuroscience from Harvard, Introduction to Negotiation from Yale, and Calculus and Principles of Synthetic Biology from MIT. Millions of online students participate in MOOCs. Knowledge@Wharton, the online business journal of University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, produced this useful MOOC manual: a superb, hands-on guide that explains how online learners can get the most from these classes. getAbstract recommends this timely, useful e-book to anyone intrigued by – or already participating in – online learning.

Summary

The Value of MOOCs

Max Buckley was close to graduating from Ireland’s Cork Institute of Technology when he learned about massive open online courses (MOOCs). A business administration student, Buckley wanted to broaden his knowledge about up-to-date technology and computers. He signed up for MIT’s free Circuits and Electronics MOOC. Although he couldn’t finish the course because of his final exams at Cork, he loved the online-learning experience and enrolled in more MOOC computer-programming courses offered by some of the world’s most prestigious universities.

Buckley was already enrolled in a data-analysis course when he interviewed for a Google internship. The Google staffer interviewing him was enrolled in the same MOOC. Buckley won the internship, and Google later hired him full-time. Today, Buckley is a Google product-quality analyst. Buckley and his interviewer shared the experience of self-directed learning. Enrolling in MOOCs doesn’t guarantee anyone a job, of course, but Buckley’s tale illustrates how much learners with the necessary “time, commitment and Internet connection” can gain when they enroll in MOOCs.

Many universities offer MOOCs in conjunction...

About the Author

Knowledge@Wharton is the online business analysis journal of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. It publishes a global edition in English and regional editions in Spanish, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.

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