MOOC Cap: The week in MOOC News April 5-12

Here’s what happened in the news involving all things MOOC!

• Coursera Begins making money by Inside Higher Ed
  • Coursera brought in $220,000  in the first quarter of 2013 after it started charging for verified completion certificates. The other source of revenue for coursera is via Amazon affiliate fees. So if a professor suggests a book and a student buys it, coursera gets a slice of that money.
• Credit for MOOCS in Florida . A Florida bill will allow Florida officials to accredit classes that students take on their own time (including MOOCs). The bill would create a new kind of accreditation ”Florida Accreditation” and threatens the current status quo of college accreditation in general.
• MOOCs and intellectual property : Who owns the work/materiel and IP that goes into the making of a MOOC? (4/8/2013) . The ‘O’ for ‘open’ does not really seem to mesh well with the terms of service of some of the  MOOC providers.
• Coursera on Dropout Rates : Coursera says that there is more to the high dropout rates in MOOCs than may at first meet the eye.
• Questioning MOOC openness : (4/4/2013) Questioning the ‘O’ in MOOC by looking at the ways that the big mooc providers are not really open and don’t, often, even let you see all course content until you make a commitment.