Sustainable MOOC Platforms - Searching for Business Models of the Future

Halsbenning Sebastian, Niemann Marco


Abstract

MOOCs went through a typical hype. The promising concept attracted many companies and educational institutions, leading to a massive rush of enrollments. This trend of massive growth lasted for about three years. MOOCs turned out to exhibit several shortcomings, including high production costs and massive drop-out rates. As the world is confronted with pandemic-induced lockdowns, MOOCs are considered viable options to keep up education systems, with traditional methods becoming unavailable. To sustainably unfold MOOCs' inherent advantages and extend their range and acceptance, a deeper understanding of the underlying business models is needed. Using the well-known Business Model Canvas combined with a classical web-content analysis, we set forth to chart existing MOOC platform business models. Based on the identified concepts, we seek to identify problematic and promising patterns as a basis for optimization. We present preliminary results and formulate propositions that will guide our future research.

Keywords
MOOCs; Digital Platform; Business Model; Online Education



Publication type
Research article in digital collection (conference)

Peer reviewed
Yes

Publication status
Published

Year
2021

Conference
Proceedings of the 29th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2021)

Venue
Marrakech

Language
English

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