Comparing MOOC Adoption Strategies in Europe: Results from the HOME Project Survey

Abstract

Much of the literature and the academic discussion about institutional strategic planning of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) has been centred on the U.S. context. Literature on MOOCs in Europe is still developing and just recently some empirical studies were conducted. However, these studies are not comparable, and it is hard to learn about differences between regions and types of educational institutions. Given the very different institutional, political and cultural contexts, it is interesting to analyse how in these two different regions Higher Education institutions (HEIs) are responding to the challenges of the MOOC phenomena and are integrating it in their own strategic planning. The current research presents the first attempt to conduct a comparative study of institutional MOOC strategies in Europe and U.S. It is based on a survey launched by the EU-funded HOME project and compares results with a similar survey conducted in U.S. Results show that there are significant differences in how the U.S. and European HEIs understand the impact of massive open education and also how they perceive the efficiency of digital education and online learning.