The first course carrying the name MOOC was offered in 2008, so this is new phenomenon. Second, the
pedagogical style of the early courses, which we shall call cMOOCs, was based on a philosophy of connectivism and networking. This is quite distinct from
the xMOOCs now being developed by elite US institutions that follow a more behaviourist approach. Third, the few academic studies of MOOCs are about the
earlier offerings because there has been no time for systematic research on the crop of 2012 xMOOCs. Analysis of the latter has to be based on a large
volume of press articles and blogs. Fourth, commentary on MOOCs includes thinly disguised promotional material by commercial interests (e.g. Koller, 2012)
and articles by practitioners whose perspective is their own MOOC courses.