If you are looking to explore potential areas of future study, want to provide evidence of studying a subject outside of a school curriculum for an application to a university or for a job, or just want to learn something new but don’t have the time to commit to a lengthy attendance-based course, then a Massive Online Open Course may be right for you.

Adaptations and shorter versions of existing courses
M.O.O.C’s are stand-alone, university level courses that have no entry requirements. The majority of courses are free, but some do charge a fee. Whilst some providers develop tailor made courses, many are adaptations, and often shorter versions, of existing courses delivered by the university.
Universities across the world provide access to a huge range of courses via online platforms. However, courses provided by an overseas university may not conform to UK educational or cultural norms. Most courses will run for between four and eight weeks and require a time commitment of around four hours a week, making them a highly practical, and often cost-free way of accessing high quality courses from prestigious universities. However, few M.O.O.C’s currently provide formal or transferable qualifications.
Most courses rely on the use of video, online student forums, guided reflective study or group work, and provide suggestions for further reading. Since the course is online, you can re-watch clips or read text as often as you want, and you may be given continuing access to the course information after the course is completed.

Very flexible and often free of charge
The majority have no examination, but may require you to contribute to an online debate before you can proceed to the next section. The course provider will make it clear what the expected time commitment for the course is in the course description. Having enrolled on the course, the provider normally releases the next stage of the course on a weekly basis.
Since there is no attendance requirement they are very flexible, allowing you to fit the course in around work or other study, and to catch up on the course if you miss a week. However, as they are of short duration, and often free, many of those who enroll do not complete this type of course. It’s therefore important to build time for the course into your schedule.
On completion of the course, most providers give you the option to pay for a certificate of completion. Unless this is a formal qualification that has an examination or other type of assessment this is unlikely to be worthwhile, but a free option of proving completion of the course is to take a screen shot of the course completion page.
A large number of UK universities offer free M.O.O.C’s via www.futurelearn.com, and The Open University – the UK pioneer of distance learning – provides free courses via www.open.edu/openlearn.
www.coursera.org is a consortium of over 100 universities from around the world, and www.edx.org is a not for profit provider created by Harvard university in the USA.