They create something native to the Web that takes advantage of what the Web can do, rather than simply trying to mimic a classroom virtually.

cMOOC and xMOOC.

The first MOOC was a cMOOC, taught by two Canadian scholars, George Siemens and Stephen Downes

It might be helpful to take a quick step back and talk about why Stephen and I started with open online courses. We were both at a Desire2Learn conference in Memphis in 2008. And we were both tired of arguing about connectivism (“is it a theory”). We decided that experiencing networked learning was important to understanding networked learning. Instead of talking connectivism, we wanted to create an experience that was essentially connectivist: open, distributed, learner-defined, social, and complex.

However, not much commentary looks at the history of MOOCs with an approach to understanding why so many universities are creating them and massive numbers of students are joining them.

An influence to many other ideas in the future, the Open University revitalized distance education because it combined correspondence instruction, supplementary broadcasting and publishing, residential short courses and support services at local and regional levels.

Much of the MOOC philosophy is based on their special approach to higher education.