It is now six years since the advent of the first MOOC course, and 2012 is widely identified as the year that the hype surrounding MOOCs reached its peak and in 2013 began its path into ‘trough of disillusionment’. The key questions for institutions are what lessons we might learn from the MOOC experiment and how this may help institutions to develop a more strategic approach to improve the quality of teaching and learning and open up access to higher education?

Following the well cited Cetis white paper ‘MOOCs and Open Education: Implications for Higher Education’ (BIS, UNESCO, Universities UK), this new report looks beyond the current debate on MOOCs to understand the potential of open online learning for learners, educators and institutions from pedagogical, financial and technological perspectives.

In this Beyond MOOCs white paper, we discuss key concepts emerging from the MOOC development that may have significant impact on future HE, these include openness, revenue models, and service disaggregation of HE provision. We also identify the areas that institutions may consider to explore with open online provision through the lenses of technology options, pedagogical opportunities and learner choices. In conclusion, we provide a decision-making framework to address questions of what form or forms of online learning provision would be appropriate to meet a particular organisation’s business needs.

Hopefully, this report will stimulate further discussions and debate on exploring the opportunities developed by MOOCs and to experiment with new forms of provision that go beyond HEI’s existing markets. We would welcome opportunities to continue discuss and explore ideas around open online learning in higher education in future workshops and seminars. If you are interested in discussing the implications of this paper for your institution, please contact Li Yuan at l.yuan@bolton.ac.uk, Stephen Powell at stephenp.powell@gmail.com or Bill Olivier at B.Olivier@bolton.ac.uk at Cetis (http://www.cetis.org.uk).