Website provides comprehensive guide that allows prospective students to easily search for the right class to fit their needs
ISSAQUAH, Wash., Jan. 15, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — A new trend in distance education is the Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC. In the past year, MOOCs have seen a huge surge and Top Free Classes has connected more students to MOOCs than ever before. With an estimated 10 million people who have registered for MOOCs thus far, the MOOC providers only expect the number of courses and participants to increase in the next year. Top Free Classes has experienced this growth firsthand and has helped facilitate emerging trends in the MOOC industry.
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140114/PH46129-a )
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140114/PH46129-b )
Besides the sheer amount of MOOCs now available, there have been several other developments as well. Credit granting MOOCs have been growing in different capacities, and various accreditation schemes are emerging. When MOOCs first began offering classes, it was the computer science classes that were most common, but this year has seen humanities classes take the lead of largest category of MOOCs. Yet another change seen in MOOC trends is the language of instruction. English has been the most common language of instruction of MOOCs, but now more universities and providers are joining the game and other languages of instruction are developing. Languages like French, Spanish, German, and Mandarin Chinese MOOCs are expanding and predicted to continue to increase in the coming years.
The MOOC community is now coming together with new partnerships and conferences to discuss the real changes that are occurring in education. Conferences for MOOC providers, like the recent MOOCs and Copyright Management Conference on December 6, are becoming commonplace as people are interested in discussing and investigating how MOOCs are changing education. MOOCs have received an incredible amount of media coverage and high praise. They are being called the most important education technology of the past 200 years, but only time will tell how revolutionary MOOCs will be in education and business. Stanford's Dr. Keith Devlin recently wrote an article about how MOOCs are affecting Silicon Valley, and this exploration of MOOCs' effects on different industries continues to grow.
Although more providers of MOOCs are emerging, Coursera continues to be the largest provider. Some of the other MOOC providers are EdX, Udacity, NovoEd, Canvas, FutureLearn, iversity, Open2Study, OpenLearning, and more. Several of the providers are joining together with more universities to offer more courses, and other players like LinkedIn and corporate developed MOOCs are getting in on MOOCs as well.
Top Free Classes sorts and organizes online courses from many different MOOC providers into a user friendly guide for people interested in exploring and joining the world of the virtual classroom. With a current total of 1007 active courses, 614 of which were added in 2013, the website has several methods of searching for classes, based on the needs of the student. Each MOOC has a brief description and a link to the direct source, as well as reviews from students who have taken the MOOC previously. Top Free Classes also breaks down the basics about the course, such as the start date of the class, the duration, the approximate workload, the level, and whether credit is awarded for the course. This information will help the student find the right MOOCs that fit their unique schedule.
About Top Free Classes
Top Free Classes was created in mid-2012 as a response to the growing number of classes offered and the difficulty of finding interesting classes. It serves as a convenient one-stop destination for discovering new classes, checking out other students' opinions, and sharing experiences. For more information, please visit http://www.topfreeclasses.com.
Contact:
Svetlana Anikeeva
TFC Online LLC
(402) 413-1832
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