Technological Innovations in Large-Scale Teaching: Five Roots of Massive Open Online Courses

There are millions of people worldwide—of all ages, conditions, backgrounds, and motivations—with significant learning needs. Unfortunately, traditional education is not efficient enough to meet these needs. That is, the available educational resources are not fully exploited to help cover the demand. There is an increasing need for large-scale access to cost-effective and high-quality education. The use of technological innovations for large-scale teaching might be part of the solution. In this context, the goals of this study were to identify technological innovations that can be considered historical milestones in large-scale teaching, to systematize experts’ opinions about the topic, and to propose strategies for the successful implementation of massive open online courses (MOOCs). The researchers identified and analyzed a documentary corpus and found that, in the use of technologies for large-scale teaching, there has been a parallel evolution that have led to the emergence of MOOCs and includes five roots: distance education and online learning, testing or teaching machines and computer-assisted instruction, learning management systems, open education and open educational resources, and online massive teaching. The researchers propose three strategies for the successful implementation of MOOCs: careful consideration of the c/x MOOC pedagogical spectrum characteristics, selection of an appropriate MOOC model, and management of implementation challenges.