International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning

Volume 23, Number 3

September - 2022

The Landscape of MOOC Platforms Worldwide

Maria Perifanou and Anastasios A. Economides
University of Macedonia

Abstract

Previous studies have mainly investigated major massive open online course (MOOC) platforms such as Coursera, edX, and Udemy. This study used 21 metrics to explore 35 MOOC platforms from across the world. Five Web analytics tools were used to analyze these MOOC platforms using data from MOOC platform directories and exploration of platform sites. The findings revealed that many universities, companies, and organizations have cooperated with the platforms and provided MOOCs through them. Major global platforms have offered thousands of MOOCs while regional platforms were more likely to have offered dozens. Some large platforms had millions of registered users while others registered just thousands. The major global platforms were established in the US to offer MOOCs mainly in English, though they offered MOOCs in other languages as well. The regional platforms offered MOOCs mainly in local languages, and to some extent in English and other languages. Some platforms engaged users for long periods while others failed to keep users after they viewed the first page of the platform. On average, a visitor stayed on a platform for 8 minutes visited 7.2 pages per visit. Major global platforms attracted users from all over the world, while regional platforms mainly attracted users from countries where the regional platform language was spoken. Some platforms had very few accessibility and contrast errors while other platforms performed poorly. Most platforms were mobile-friendly. However, administrators of almost all MOOC platforms should take actions to increase the speed of their platform. Other recommendations include undertaking marketing campaigns to increase the number of partners, the number of MOOCs offered, and the platforms’ visibility.

Keywords: Massive open online course, MOOC, MOOC platform, open education, users' engagement

Introduction

The aims of many international organizations include a focus on open education for everyone. For example, the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948) specifically cited the right of free education for everyone. Similarly, the European Commission (2016) in their agenda on open education included aims for open access and participation in education for everyone.

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have been proposed as a tool to achieve open education for all without restrictions of time and location (Siemens, 2013). In MOOCs, massive means that a huge number of learners can access, attend, and participate. The term open means that anyone can freely access, attend, and participate in a MOOC without any restrictions (e.g., prior educational qualification, time, place). Access to, attendance at, and participation in a MOOC all happen online. Finally, describing a MOOC as a course means that it is structured into several modules and provided within a specific time frame. It may contain video lectures, educational material, assignments, self-assessment tests, quizzes, and online discussion forums. The duration of a MOOC may vary from a few hours to months. Certification can be issued for a fee after the learner has successfully passed a final exam.

There are two main categories of MOOCs—xMOOCs where the teacher delivers instruction, perhaps through video presentations and quizzes, and cMOOCs or connectivist MOOCs that emphasize knowledge creation, autonomy, collaboration, and social networking (Siemens, 2013). However, there are also several variations of these two main categories (Economides & Perifanou, 2018a; Clark, 2013; Hidalgo & Abril, 2020; Liyanagunawardena et al., 2019; Pilli & Admiraal, 2016). MOOCs are offered stand-alone on a website or together with other MOOCs in one or more MOOC platforms (Zawacki-Richter et al., 2018). A MOOC platform is an environment shared by a very large number of MOOC learners, creators, and teachers as well as providers, universities, organizations, and companies. It hosts and runs MOOCs that have been created by MOOC providers. It also offers participants tools and services such as searching, cataloguing, management, creation, hosting, sharing, and evaluation. Popular MOOC platforms include Coursera, edX, FutureLearn, Swayam, Udacity, Udemy, and so on. A MOOC provider may be a university, organization, company, or individual (e.g., instructor) that provides one or more MOOCs to learners via either private or shared platforms. Major MOOC providers include Google Cloud, Harvard University, IBM, Microsoft, MIT, Stanford University, University of California, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, and others. A MOOC aggregator or directory contains a list, directory, or database of MOOC metadata and links to MOOCs. It may simply list the names of MOOCs and links to them. MOOC aggregators include Class Central, MOOC-list, CourseTalk, and MyEducationPath. Similarly, a MOOC platform aggregator or directory contains a list, directory, or database of metadata related to MOOC platforms and links to these platforms. It may simply list the names of MOOC platforms and their links.

After the first excitement about MOOCs in 2012, the COVID-19 pandemic brought MOOCs once again to the forefront (Mays et al., 2021; Purkayastha & Sinha, 2021; Salas-Rueda et al., 2022). During the pandemic, there was increased interest in MOOCs due to the quarantine measures applied in many countries. Learners wanted to access open educational material via the Internet, from any place and at any time. The number of learners registered on a MOOC platform in 2020 corresponded to one-third of all learners ever registered on such platforms (Shah, 2020). More specifically, between 2012 and 2020 (and excluding China), the number of learners increased from 2 million to 180 million. The number of courses increased from 250 in 2012 to 16,300 in 2020, and over the same period, the number of university partners in MOOC platforms increased from 40 to 950 (Shah, 2020).

In addition, there has been an increase in the number of publications on MOOCs (Alemayehu & Chen, 2021; Hidalgo & Abril, 2020). Most previous studies on MOOCs investigated learners’ motivation (e.g., Hakami et al., 2017; Zhu et al., 2018), behaviour (e.g., Ferguson & Clow, 2015), and drop-out rates (e.g., Alario-Hoyos et al., 2014; Jordan, 2014). Several studies investigated characteristics of MOOC quality (e.g., Economides & Perifanou, 2018a; Gamage et al., 2015; Margaryan et al., 2015; Oh et al., 2020; Shanshan & Wenfei, 2022; Singh, 2022; Yousef et al., 2015), and the limited openness of course materials (e.g., Li et al., 2014).

However, there have been few studies investigating MOOC platforms (see Table 1), and most of these studied the few well-known MOOC platforms (e.g., Coursera, edX, Udemy, Udacity). Ayoub et al. (2020) suggested extending the investigation of platforms beyond the few well-known ones. Furthermore, a systematic literature review (Hakami et al., 2017) found that most MOOC-related studies focused only on few geographic regions. Researchers such as Li et al. (2014) and Ruipérez-Valiente et al. (2020) recommended the investigation of not only global MOOC platforms (e.g., Coursera, edX) but also MOOC platforms from different regions. Therefore, this study investigated the current state of 35 global and regional MOOC platforms from around the world.

Table 1

Previous Studies Evaluating MOOC Platforms

Table 1 illustrates that most previous studies examined well-known MOOC platforms (e.g., Coursera, edX) with respect to (a) number of courses, partner institutes, learners, and course subjects (e.g., Costa et al., 2018; Maldonado-Mahauad et al., 2021); (b) languages (e.g., Cisel, 2019; Conache et al., 2016; Goglio & Nascimbeni, 2021; Li et al., 2014); (c) course duration and workload (e.g., Antonova & Bontchev, 2020; Ayoub et al., 2020; Brahimi & Sarirete, 2015; Cisel, 2019). Other previous studies examined well-known MOOC platforms regarding their (a) business models (e.g., Cornejo-Velazquez et al., 2020; Lin et al., 2015); (b) openness (e.g., Agrawal et al., 2015; Conache et al., 2016; Funieru & Lazaroiu, 2016; Goglio & Nascimbeni, 2021); and (c) mobile access (e.g., Agrawal et al., 2015; Antonova & Bontchev, 2020; Li et al., 2014; Lin et al., 2015). In addition, Conache et al. (2016) investigated four well-known MOOC platforms to determine their (a) rank, (b) speed, (c) number of visits, (d) visit duration, (e) number of pages viewed per visitor.

However, no previous study has examined other parameters of MOOC platforms such as the (a) distribution of visits from main countries of origin, (b) distribution of visits by originating source, (c) number of Websites pointing to it, (d) number of links pointing to it, (e) age of links, (f) bounce rate, and (g) accessibility. Thus, this study analyzed 35 MOOC platforms using 21 parameters (including new and previously proposed parameters). It depicted the profiles of these MOOC platforms, their popularity, and their users’ engagement.

The next section presents the methodology for this study, followed by the results. Conclusions and recommendations are also provided.

Methodology

This study took place from summer to autumn, in 2021. A five-stage methodology was followed: (a) identify major MOOC platforms around the world, (b) identify methods and tools to evaluate these MOOC platforms, (c) identify evaluation parameters and their corresponding metrics, (d) measure and record the metrics for each platform, and (e) analyze the measurements.

To begin, we located 35 major MOOC platforms as catalogued by Class Central (Shah et al., 2021). Class Central aggregates, lists, and reviews courses from many providers so learners can find appropriate courses to meet their educational objectives. The final list included major global and regional MOOC platforms from around the world. We then defined the methods and tools for evaluating these 35 MOOC platforms. Initially, we explored these platforms on Class Central. Then we collected information curated by MOOC-list, CourseTalk, and MyEducationPath.

Next, we thoroughly explored each of these platforms by visiting their Websites. We recorded the platform’s (a) hosting country, (b) launch year, (c) number of registered users, (d) number of partner institutes, (e) number of MOOCs offered, and (f) the most common languages and subjects of their offered MOOCs. In cases where the platform content was in languages we did not speak, we used automatic translation tools. However, several parts of these platforms could not be translated automatically. In addition, each platform followed a different structure and provided different information regarding its content. Since it was not feasible to depend only on information found on their Websites, we resorted to five Web analytics tools in order to achieve a uniform and comparable evaluation of these platforms: SimilarWeb, OpenLinkProfiler, Google PageSpeed Insights, Google Mobile-Friendly, and WAVE.

• Using SimilarWeb, we measured each platform’s (a) global rank; (b) rank in education; (c) number of visits during last six months; (d) distribution (percentages) of visits from main countries of origin; (e) distribution (percentages) of visits by direct, referral, search, and social media; (f) average visit duration; (g) average number of pages per visit; and (h) bounce rate.
• Using Google PageSpeed Insights, we measured each platform’s speed.
• Using Google Mobile-Friendly, we measured each platform’s mobile-friendliness.
• Using WAVE, we measured each platform’s accessibility errors, contrast errors, and accessibility alerts.
• Using OpenLinkProfiler, for each platform we measured (a) the number of Websites pointing to it; (b) the distribution (percentages) of Websites pointing to it by country; (c) the number of links pointing to it; and (d) the age of these links.

Table 2 summarizes the evaluation parameters and metrics that framed the data collection for this study.

Table 2

Evaluation Parameters and Metrics for Measuring MOOC Platforms

The names of most metrics were self-explanatory. The metric labelled distribution (percentages) of visits by direct, referral, search, and social media corresponded to the percentages of visitors that came to the platform directly, or after visiting another Website that pointed to the platform, after using a search engine, or after visiting social media. The metric bounce rate corresponded to the percentage of visitors who left the Website after viewing just one page. Regarding platform speed, 0 to 50 was a poor score, 50 to 90 was a medium score, and 90 to 100 was a good score. The age of links metric described the distribution (percentages) of the number of new links pointing to the platform during each of the years 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021.

Table 2 shows how we allocated the 21 metrics to each one of five main platform parameters: (a) demographics, (b) size, (c) popularity, (d) visitor engagement, and (e) technical characteristics.

• Demographics included the platform’s host country, launch year, as well as the languages and subjects of its MOOCs.
• Platform size was determined by the number of MOOCs the platform offered and its number of partner institutions.
• Popularity was measured by the platform’s (a) global rank, (b) education rank, (c) number of registered users, (d) number of visits, (e) distribution of visits from main countries, (f) distribution of visits by originating source, (g) number of Websites pointing to it, (h) number of links pointing to it, and (i) age of links.
• Visitor engagement was measured by the average duration of platform visits, average number of pages per visit, and bounce rate.
• A platform’s technical characteristics were measured by its speed, mobile-friendliness, and accessibility.

In the final stage we measured the 21 metrics defined above. The next section presents the analysis of these findings.

Results and Discussion

Platform Demographics

The list of 35 platforms was international in scope (Shah et al., 2021). Platforms have been developed in many countries all over the world. Although the major platforms (e.g., Coursera, edX, Udacity, Udemy) are located in US, other large platforms are located in China (XuetangX), India (Swayam), UK (FutureLearn), and Spain (MiriadaX). Table 3 summarizes the data on platform demographics and size.

Table 3

MOOC Platforms: Demographics and Size

Note. A question mark means that data were not available. * Indicates there were connection problems in reviewing the platform.

The number of platforms increased rapidly starting in 2012, the year of the MOOCs, and numbers continued to grow for the next three years (2013-2015). In 2017, two large MOOC platforms, Swayam (India) and Xue Yin Online (China), came on the scene.

Table 3 shows that while most global platforms offered MOOCs mainly in English, they have started offering MOOCs in other languages too. For example, Coursera (a major global platform) offered 2,334 courses in English and a large number of MOOCs in other languages, including Spanish (1,064), Russian (1,005), French (948), Portuguese (869), Arabic (801), German (755), Vietnamese (755), and Italian (729). On the other hand, most local platforms offered MOOCs mainly in their local language, though many also offer MOOCs in English. For example, the French regional platform Fun-MOOC offered MOOCs in French (589), English (69), Spanish (5), Arabic (1), Japanese (1), and Simplified Chinese (1).

Most platforms covered a large variety of subjects mainly addressing adults’ learning needs (e.g., higher education students, continuing education professionals). Most platforms mainly offered information and communication technologies (ICT) MOOCs followed by technical and professional development topics. For example, Coursera offered MOOCs in the following subjects (number of MOOCs): computer science (1,018), data science (667), information technology (265), language learning (248), business (151), physical science and engineering (85), social sciences (68), arts and humanities (63), and health (54). A few platforms exclusively offered ICT MOOCs (e.g., OpenHPI).

Platform Size

Thousands of MOOCs were offered by the major global platforms (Coursera, 7,500; edX, 4,000; Udemy, 150,000), Chinese platforms (CNMOOC, 2,500; iCourse, 9,000; XuetangX, 3,500; Xue Yin Online, 6,000; Zhihuishu, 8,300), as well as Indian Swayam (2,000), Taiwanese eWant (1,900), UK FutureLearn (1,500), and Korean K-MOOC (1,000). Almost all platforms have created partnerships with universities, businesses, and organizations that offer their MOOCs through the platforms. The Chinese iCourse and XuetangX have the largest number of partners, with 785 and 641, respectively. A number of platforms have over 100 partners: Coursera (200), edX (160), FunMOOC (140), FutureLearn (200), K-MOOC (140), MiriadaX (100), and Swayam (135).

Platform Popularity

Table 4 summarizes the data on the popularity of MOOC platforms. In general, platforms did not succeed in achieving high rank scores among all Websites worldwide. According to SimilarWeb, only Udemy (314) and Coursera (611) managed to be among the top 1,000 websites. However, several platforms were among the top 100 educational Websites worldwide: Coursera (26), Edraak (25), FunMOOC (81), FutureLearn (9), iCourse 163 (11), K-MOOC (65), Openedu.ru (88), Prometheus (47), Rwaq (75), Swayam (97), ThaiMOOC (28), and Udemy (16).

Table 4

MOOC Platforms’ Popularity: SimilarWeb Rankings and Data on Visitors and Visits

Note. A question mark means that data were not available. * Indicates there were connection problems in reviewing the platform.

Data about the number of registered users were missing from many platforms and could not be found on the platforms themselves, on Class Central, or other platform directories (e.g., CourseTalk, MOOC-list, MyEducationPath). The four major US-based platforms had the most registered users worldwide, namely Coursera (87 million), edX (35 million), Udacity (16 million), and Udemy (40 million). In fact, these four platforms have managed to more than double their registered users since 2017 (Shah, 2018). However, the advent of Chinese platforms XuetangX (60 million) and Zhihuishu (10 million) have upset the status quo. In addition, India’s Swayam (16 million) and UK’s FutureLearn (15 million) have become serious competitors. Other platforms with over a million registered users include Spain’s MiriadaX (6 million), Jordan’s Edraak (4 million), MexicoX (2.5 million), France’s FunMOOC (2 million), Russia’s Openedu.ru (1.8 million), Korea’s K-MOOC (1.6 million), Ukraine’s Prometheus (1.5 million), Saudi Arabia’s Rwaq (1 million), and Germany’s Iversity (1 million).

Table 4 shows that the major global platforms clearly attracted the largest numbers of visitors during the last six months: Coursera (51.62 million), edX (16.29 million), and Udemy (110.27 million). Other platforms that received over one million visitors during the last six months included US’s Canvas Network (1.35 million), Jordan’s Edraak (1.47 million), UK’s FutureLearn (5.89 million), China’s iCourse163 (3.59 million), India’s Swayam (2.79 million), and US’s Udacity (5.82 milion)

Table 4 indicates that most regional platforms attracted visitors mainly from their local country (e.g., XuetangX, Xu Yin Online, and Zhihuishu from China; Swayame from India; Openedu.rus from Russia; ThaiMOOC from Thailand; K-MOOC from Korea; eWant and Gacco from Taiwan; and Prometheus from Ukraine). However, the major global platforms achieved a balanced distribution of visitors from many different countries. So, although Coursera, edX, Udacity, and Udemy were located in US, they attracted international visitors from all over the world. Similarly, FutureLearn (UK) and Iversity (Germany) attracted visitors from various countries. Another interesting result is that many platforms offering MOOCs in a specific language attracted visitors from countries where that language was also spoken. So, Edraak (Jordan) and Rwaq (Saudi Arabia) attracted visitors from Arabic-speaking countries, MiriadaX (Spain) attracted visitors from Spanish-speaking countries, and OpenHPI (Germany) attracted visitors from German-speaking countries.

Visitors came directly to well-known global platforms (e.g., Coursera, edX, Udacity, Udemy). These platforms had already established their brand name and MOOC learners knew them. Similarly, locals visited regional platforms directly (e.g., Edraak, eWant, Federica Web learning, Fun-MOOC, iCourse163, Iversity, K-MMOC, MexicoX, MiriadaX, Openedu.ru, OpenHPI, XuetangX, Xue Yin Online, Zhihuishu). Many visitors, perhaps not yet well acquainted with a platform, came to Canvas Network (80%), FutureLearn (41%), Gacco (41%), and Rwaq (41%) via search engine results. Another interesting observation is that a large percentage (25%) of ThaiMOOC’s visitors came to it through social media. Perhaps ThaiMOOC has done a successful marketing champaign in social media, or it may be that Thai people use social media a great deal.

Table 5 presents data on the popularity of MOOC platforms. The most popular platforms, pointed to by over 100,000 Websites, were Coursera (110,000) and Udemy (124,000), followed by edX (54,000), Future Learn (27,000), and Udacity (31,000). In addition, many other platforms had become well-known enough that more than 1,000 Websites hyperlinked to each of them: Canvas Network (4,000), Fun-MOOC (7,500), Iversity (3,000), Kadenze (1,500), MiraiasX (4,500), OpenHPI (1,500), Open Universities Australia (1,500), and Swayam (3,300). The majority of Websites that pointed to most platforms were located in the US. However, for some regional platforms, the majority of Websites that hyperlink to them were located in the platform’s local country. So, EduOpen, EMMA, and Federica were mainly highlighted in Italian websites; Fun-MOOC was mainly linked to by French Websites; OpenHPI was mainly referred to by German Websites; and Swayam was mainly pointed to by Indian websites. However, it was strange that the Chinese platform Xue Yin Online was mainly pointed to by Indian Websites. This may be because Xue Yin Online was established in 2017 and had not yet had time to become known; only 48 Websites pointed to it.

Table 5

MOOC Platforms’ Popularity: Websites and Links

Note. A question mark means that data were not available. * Indicates there were connection problems in reviewing the platform.

It is apparent from Table 5 that although similar numbers of Websites pointed to Coursera (110,000) and Udemy (124,000), the number of hyperlinks pointing to them differed greatly. A huge number of hyperlinks pointed to Udemy (2.5 million), followed by edX (1 million), Coursera (807,000), FutureLearn (544,000), and Udacity (451,000). Over 100,000 links pointed to each of the following regional platforms: Fun-MOOC (187,000), MiriadaX (154,000), and Swayam (216,000).

The evolution of a platform’s visibility became apparent through examining the number of links to a platform over the years. For example, among the 2.5 million links pointing to Udemy, 4% were created in 2016, 14% in 2017, 14% in 2018, 21% in 2019, 24% in 2020, and 18% in 2021 (see Table 5). It is interesting to note that during 2021, Coursera and Prometheus managed to double the number of links pointing to them. Also, during 2020 to 2021, eWant, iCourse163, and Swayam substantially increased the numbers of links pointing to them. One reason for this increase was the rising demand for online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic (Perifanou et al., 2022; Asare et al., 2021; Lee et al., 2022). It is possible that these platforms exploited the increased demand for online learning and attracted the attention of many Websites. They may also have invested in large marketing campaigns to promote their Websites. On the other hand, Edraak, EMMA, Fisdom, Gacco, and Iversity did not gain links during the 2020 to 2021 period. It seems that these platforms did not take advantage of the growing demand for online learning, and lost the chance to increase their visibility during the pandemic period.

Visitor Engagement

Visitors to Federica stayed for the longest time (Table 6); the average visit duration at Federica was more than 21 minutes. Note that all MOOCs on Federica were free of charge. Also, visitors stayed more than 10 minutes at Coursera (11:51), eWant (10:07), iCourse163 (11:50), ThaiMOOC (13:58), Udacity (12:10), Udemy (11:06), and XuetangX (12:01). On the other hand, visitors stayed the shortest time at Canvas Network (1:36). On average, a visitor remained at a platform for eight minutes.

Table 6

MOOC Platforms: Visitor Engagement and Technical Characteristics

Note. A question mark means that data were not available. * Indicates there were connection problems in reviewing the platform.

Table 6 indicates that, the greatest average number of pages per visit was to Federica (14.22), ThaiMOOC (13.57), and eWant (12.29). By comparison, the least average number of pages per visit was to Canvas Network (2.83), Iversity (3.27), and Swayam (2.69). Overall, the average number of pages per visit was 7.2.

Federica, iCourse163, ThaiMOOC, XuetangX, Xue Yin Online, and Zhihuishu achieved a bounce rate less than or equal to 30%. It is notable that most of these platforms were Chinese. One possible explanation is that these platforms have designed their Websites in such a way that visitors stayed longer and visited many pages. Another explanation may be related to visitors’ personal, cultural, or other characteristics. In contrast, almost half of the visitors to Canvas Network, FutureLearn, Iversity, MiriadaX, and Rwaq left the platform after viewing just one page.

Platforms’ Technical Characteristics

A platform speed score of 90 or above was considered good. A score between 50 to 90 meant that the platform needed improvement, and a score below 50 was considered poor. As shown in Table 6, almost all platforms (with the exception of Zhihuishu) needed to increase their speed. Zhihuishu showed almost perfect speed, while EMMA, Federica, Open Learning Japan, and Swayam achieved a moderate speed. The rest of the platforms performed extremely poorly, and they urgently need to increase their speed.

Most platforms were mobile-friendly with the exception of Fisdom and K-MOOC. For these two platforms, the Google mobile-friendly tool indicated that the text was too small to read and clickable items were very close to each other. Platforms showed mixed results regarding their accessibility. Some platforms had very few accessibility and contrast errors while other platforms performed poorly. In particular, Canvas Network, Fun-MOOC, FutureLearn, Gacco, Open Universities Australia, Swayam, and Udemy show few accessibility and contrast errors or none at all. On the other hand, many accessibility and contrast errors were detected in EdOpen, EMMA, JMOOC, Open Education Taiwan, Openedu.ru, Open learning Japan, Prometheus, Rwaq, ThaiMOOC, and Zhihuishu.

Conclusions, Limitations, and Future Research

This study analyzed 35 MOOC platforms from around the world. It employed both manual and automatic evaluation methods. Each platform was thoroughly explored and several metrics were recorded. This information was also combined with data from MOOC platforms’ directories. Five Web analytics tools used to automatically measure various metrics of the platforms; in total, 21 metrics were recorded. The findings revealed that some platforms had developed many partnerships with universities, companies, and others, and were offering thousands of MOOCs on a variety of subjects. Although most MOOCs were in English or in the local language where the platform resided, efforts had been made to offer MOOCs in various languages. On the other hand, some platforms had only a few partners and offered a scant number of MOOCs in a limited range of subjects and languages. These platforms should be encouraged to increase their number of (a) partners, (b) MOOCs offered, (c) MOOC subjects, and (d) MOOC languages.

Some platforms had millions of registered users while others a few thousand. Major global platforms (e.g., Coursera, edX, Udacity, Udemy) had an international appeal and attracted visitors from all over the world. On the other hand, regional platforms mainly attracted users from countries where the language spoken was the same as that in the platform’s host country. Expanding a platform to offer many MOOCs in various subject and languages would help attract partners and learners from all over the world. Also, offering MOOCs free of charge would help a platform to attract learners. Platforms should make efforts to increase their visibility, brand name recognition, and popularity worldwide. Collaboration with other educational institutes, organizations, and companies would serve to increase their ranking, as well as the number of Websites and hyperlinks pointing to them. Platforms should develop marketing campaigns on search engines, Websites, and social media.

Some platforms succeeded in engaging users for long periods while others failed to have users stay after they viewed the platform’s first page. On average, a visitor stayed on a platform for 8 minutes and visited 7.2 pages per visit. By offering an easy-to-use interface and structure, efficient search engine and filters, as well as free educational material and other interesting resources, a platform would attract visitors to stay longer time and visit more pages per visit. Finally, almost no platforms had adequate speed. Even so, most platforms provided mobile-friendly pages. Some platforms presented few accessibility and contrast errors while others had many accessibility issues. Overall, it is important that platforms improve their speed and accessibility while remaining mobile-friendly.

One of the limitations of this study was that the measurements given by the Web analytics tools were not always accurate. Their measurements can even change after some time period. Even so, these measurements could be used as a current picture of the MOOC platforms landscape. Also, they can be used by a platform’s administrators to compare their platform to others. The results of this study may serve to motivate administrators to enhance their platforms by taking appropriate actions. Administrators may also be inspired by the tactics of successful platforms such as Coursera and Udemy. Future research could use other evaluation methods and criteria, such as usability and openness (Economides & Perifanou, 2018a; 2018b), to measure the quality of platforms as well as analyze platforms’ business and revenue models. Finally, future research may investigate methods to increase a platform’s number of MOOCs, partners, registered users, Websites and links pointing to it, degree of user engagement, and accessibility.

Declaration of Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

This publication has been partially supported by Erasmus+ project OPENLang Network 2018- 1-ELO1-KA203-047967. This publication reflects the views only of the authors. The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

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The Landscape of MOOC Platforms Worldwide by Maria Perifanou and Anastasios A. Economides is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.