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Although they are typically not part of the policies of companies within HRD (Human Resource Development) yet, global enterprises and SMEs have started offering MOOCs. Although relatively new, the impact is already enormous. By the end of 2015, approximately 4,200 courses were offered by 500+ universities to 35 million students. This has increased by 2016 to 6850 courses by over 700 universities to 58 million students (Class Central, 2016). Hence, 23 million new participants were registered in 2016 alone. In 2017, the numbers increased further to 81 million students, 800+ universities and about 9,400 courses (Class Central, 2017).

As with regular training offers, the quality of MOOCs strongly depends on the provider and the applied quality assurance. MOOCs started as a non-formal educational provision – and consequently are placed outside the quality control of formal courses offered by higher education systems. Some MOOCs are developed by professors individually (or in small teams), other MOOCs are co-created with companies and some universities even have whole departments support/developing MOOCs including quality control mechanisms.

Corporate Benefits of MOOC

The following is a list of the perceived corporate benefits of utilising MOOCs highlighted by interviewees within the BizMOOC project (Driha, Friedl & Jansen, 2016):

• Boost employee productivity and profits
• Improves employee retention rates
• Addresses real world challenges to improve on-the-job performance
• Organisations can identify motivated employees who possess desirable skill sets
• Increase the confidence of employees
• Ensure that employees are up-to-date with skills and professional knowledge
• Free training
• Possibility of enlarging employee and employer´s networks
• A variety of levels of training can be integrated into employee development plans
• Introductory training MOOCs can cover the basics or part of the introduction/new employee processes
• MOOCs provide flexibility in time (both pace of study and when to start) and in knowledge to acquire (not obligatory to follow all lessons of the course)
• Increased use of MOOC in the workplace require policies to support their promotion and implementation
• Support team spirit and cooperation
• Promote intercultural competences.

Before selecting a MOOC for your company, you may wish to assess and review the quality of the MOOC on offer, in order to assure that the MOOC has a high quality, and that it meets your learning needs. There are a number of ways helping you to identify and assess the quality of a MOOC:

• Look for a clear description of the course – including the breakdown of the modules available, its intended learning goals and outcomes
• Examine the materials available on the course – ensure the video is of high quality, and that there are e-books and other high quality materials available for download
• Who is the provider of the MOOC? Was it produced by a reputable university or another provider?
• Is the MOOC hosted by one of the recognised platforms? It doesn’t have to be; many universities have developed MOOCs on their own platforms, but if it is on a platform such as Coursera, FutureLearn, etc.
• it indicates that the MOOC went through their agreed production process
• Are there opportunities to work in groups and with other participants – to share ideas and experience, through the use of online communication tools? Can you interact with instructors?
• Will you receive continuous feedback and tracking of progression?
• Does the MOOC offer a certificate or statement of participation?
• Check to see if the MOOC has been based on the regular courses of a formal programme
• Look for some sort of quality label or evidence of a quality assurance process
• Check for information regarding processing of data, intellectual property, copyright information

What Kinds of MOOC are Available?

Participants that complete a MOOC may get different kind of certificates depending on the MOOC provider; ranging from digital badges, certificates of participation, verified certificates, statements of accomplishment etc. More recently some MOOC providers have been providing certificates to a collection/series of MOOCs, using terms like Micromasters, nanodegrees, online course programs, etc. some of which are recognized as partial credit towards a formal qualification in higher education.

With more than 9000 courses offered (Class Central, 2017), a broad variety of topics is available, including many HRD issues, business skills and even highly specialised courses. You can usually find information on the sites of the providers directly about the MOOCs they offer:

• MOOC List (https://www.mooc-list.com/) is an online directory of MOOCs, which provides information on the MOOCs offered by different providers, and provides search functionality by multiple criteria (topic, theme, provider, course length);

• Class Central (https://www.class-central.com/) is another online platform which collates information about online courses available;
• OpenUpEd (http://openuped.eu/) – a list of MOOCs from European providers that meet certain quality guidelines.

Using MOOC Data

During the participation in a MOOC a wide variety of personal and activity data of the participants is collected and used for different purposes by tutors, hosting platforms and possible third party actors, such as universities or companies. Partly, this data is processed by the Learning Analytics modules, in order to understand and optimize the learning process.

Four types of data are encountered: personal (private, sensitive and confidential) and non-personal. The term “personal data” is legally recognized and is defined as “any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable person is someone who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identification number or to one or more factors specific to his/her physical, physiological, mental, economic, cultural or social identity.

The implementation of data privacy and data protection in MOOCs is not an easy task because it includes the involvement of multiple stakeholders and interested parties with a wide variety of interested issues applying in different context. Additionally there is a need for the development of appropriate mechanisms and tools for good data classification, for delivering complete information to learners about their collected data and for schemes in support of suitable choices in a given learning scenario.

Since May 25th, 2018 at least the European providers have to be compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation, another set of criterion to be considered when selecting a MOOC platform or course.

Integrating MOOC Provision

MOOCs can be easily integrated into already existing corporate learning programs as it is just a different training method. One advantage is that the staff training with MOOCs can also be conducted outside the working time. Hereby the question arises whether training is working time or leisure time. If the advanced training is taking place outside the working time (e.g. on weekends or during official holidays), the regulations of the law on rest periods need to be taken into consideration (Kraft, 2008). Furthermore, the order to work overtime needs to be covered by the contract of employment or the wage agreement and there must not be any opposing interest of the employee (e.g. incompatibility with childcare obligations, already booked weekend holiday, etc.)⁵.

Of course the respective country’s regulation needs to be taken into consideration. In Austria the following regulation is applied according to the Austrian Act on Working Hours: Working time is classified as those periods of time where employees are present in the employer’s range of authority and are liable to its directives. During the working time, the employee cannot determine the usage of the time on its own. Whether advanced staff training is classified as working time or not is determined by the specific agreement and the working contract of employer and employee.

According to Kraft (2008), in the case such an agreement does not exist, the determination of working time or leisure time depends on whether the participation of the training was:

• Mandatory directed by the employer → definitely working time
• Realized due to a specific request of the employee or at least not mandatory and the employee had the choice to participate or not → in this case, the advanced training needs to be classified as working time at least if the training was conducted during the regular working time.

When self-designing and/or producing MOOCs, a lot of organisational effort as well as resources are required. In this respect, considerable time and financial resources for the following factors need to be considered: the virtual platform, the design, production, teaching and evaluation of the course, the development of content and technology (Renz, Schwerer, Meinel, 2016).

Therefore, the costs for producing a MOOC range from € 25,000 to € 500,000 (Schultz, 2014). This wide range is derived from the various demands of the companies on MOOCs.

According to Schultz (2014), the expenditures for a MOOC depend on the following three factors:

1. Platform (fixed costs, variable costs of support)
2. Content (fixed cost)
3. Teaching capacity (variable costs depending on the number of participants) (Renz, Schwerer, Meinel, 2016)

According to Schultz (2014), the process of producing a MOOC is divided in four phases; each phase is assigned with a different amount of required time and costs as a percentage (Renz, Schwerer, Meinel, 2016):

1. Design phase (1-2 months/5%)
2. Production phase (2-6 months/35%)
3. Teaching phase (1-3 months/45%)
4. Evaluation phase (1-3 months/10%)

Traditional in-company e-learning systems lack support for the two characteristics that distinguish a MOOC from a mere online course. Remember that MOOCs are open and designed for (potentially) massive audience, most traditional Learning Management Systems (LMS) do not support this adequately. In addition, most company owned e-learning systems are not open to the world. Both, the massiveness and the openness are the core elements that distinguish MOOCs from traditional e-learning.  However, for some organisations the number of participants is limited by language and by topic. Those organisations make a ‘clone/copy’ of existing e-learning platform on a dedicated server open to anyone (so no interference occur with regular pay-for, closed courses).

If MOOCs are produced by the company on their own, certain technical requirements are needed. Apart from the production requirements, a learning platform needs to be installed so that every employee/participant can access the course. Some companies collaborate directly with certain universities or MOOC providing platforms and use their platforms to provide their MOOCs. The big advantage of self-produced MOOCs in terms of language issues is that the company may produce and determine the language and potential translations or subtitles adjusted to the company’s needs.