Massive Online Open Courses Platforms
This article presents a comparative and analytical study that was carried out for six massive online open course (MOOC) platforms: Coursera, edX, Udacity, Canvas, FutureLearn and Riwaq. The main objective of this article was to analyze the attitudes, perspectives, and different technical and pedagogical characteristics of these platforms. This analysis was achieved by examining a sample of 16 courses from these platforms in the fields of: computing sciences, business, art and humanities. The results show the differences and similarities among these platforms in terms of interface ergonomics and interface reliability, computing tools, information systems, costs, course duration, variety of learning activities and pedagogical components, evaluation types, social interaction, and the degree of instructors' participation. This has helped us to finally choose the platform on which our Adaptive Connectivist MOOC (ACM) approach can be applied.