MOOC – The Impact of its Disruption in Higher Education

Education has undergone various changes with time. The 20th century witnessed the
conventional chalk and talk system in higher education being replaced by Power point
presentations, videos and live interactive sessions. Teachers become facilitators in imparting
knowledge. The knowledge era of the 21st century brought in a cornucopia of changes over
the entire world. The emerging technologies like Big data, Artificial Intelligence had
disrupted almost all the industries including the Higher education domain. Nevertheless, the
impact of the technologies in the education sector has to be viewed with a different
perception in contrast to the profit making view of the other industries. Among the new
technologies, this paper has focussed on MOOC -Massive Open Online Course and the
intensity of the disruption it has brought in the education sector. An overview of MOOC, its
advantages, the major beneficiaries of MOOC, the business model of MOOC, the monopoly
of few Universities behind it, the impact of its disruption and the future classrooms and
teachers are the proposed research areas. This paper in specific analyses the impact of
MOOC on college students.