A decade of MOOCs: A review of stats and trends for large-scale online courses in 2021

From EdSurge: “In 2021, two of the biggest MOOC providers had an ‘exit’ event. Coursera went public, while edX was acquired by the public company 2U for $800 million and lost its non-profit status. Ten years ago, more than 300,000 learners were taking the three free Stanford courses that kicked off the modern MOOC movement. … Now, a decade later, MOOCs have reached 220 million learners, excluding China where we don’t have as reliable data. In 2021, providers launched over 3,100 courses and 500 microcredentials. … Originally, MOOC providers relied on universities to create courses. But that dependence is declining as more and more of the courses are created by companies every year. These corporate partners in course creation include tech giants Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook.”