The MOOCs phenomenon – Massive Open Online Courses – comes with either the threat or promise of disruptive innovation in one of the fundamental pillars of society: higher education. How should business schools deal with this phenomenon?

MOOCs are networked higher education courses delivered on the net to anyone with a thick internet connection, anywhere. The first MOOC was offered in 2008 – and was a result of the convergence of distance (“e-“) learning and the accelerating bandwidth of the internet. The acronym speaks to the promises that MOOCs offer:

• Massive. The technology enables thousands of students to enroll and participate at any time in courses about anything taught by talented professors from any institution in the world.
• Open.  They are open in several respects. Anyone can enroll. Students may pay a symbolic fee to get the formal credit from the host institution, but they do not pay for participation in the course.  The material produced by faculty is open and shared openly.
• Online. Participants network openly with faculty, among themselves, and with others who are online. Content is always available on the net and can take many forms, like articles, books, videos, tweets and tags.
• Courses.  MOOCs can cover just about any course taught in a traditional university setting, from humanities to social sciences, to even the hard sciences. Almost no type of course is MOOC ineligible.