Intermediate 
Dr Ben Brabon of Edgehill University teaches a MOOC  a massive open online course  in literature. The course is one of only two accredited MOOCs currently on offer in the UK. According to Brabon, many students enrol on MOOCs because they are free and they enjoy communicating with other students. MOOCs have no enrolment criteria and no fees, so students behave very differently from students on traditional higher education courses.
MOOCs are the newest big idea to try to make higher education available to everyone. A lot of money is being invested in new online platforms that deliver sophisticated and interactive courses to tens of thousands of students. Investors hope to find a business model for MOOCs that will make them profitable  so far, courses have depended on universities funding their star lecturers course design and online teaching time. One way of making a return on the investment might be studying data about how, why and when millions of students sign up, interact with their material, submit their assignments, message each other and drop out of the course.
One of the questions about the future direction of MOOCs is that nobody can yet say who exactly they benefit. Universities who want to attract fee-paying international students onto postgraduate courses by showing off their best programmes online? Students in developing countries who want access to first-world universities? Employees who wish to develop their professional knowledge? People without qualifications who want to use MOOCs as a bridge to higher education? Or hobby learners, who want to learn about a subject area in which they have an interest?
MOOCs may be popular at the beginning, but they have very poor completion rates, says Brabon. His literature course had 1,000 enrolments and 31 completions. And almost all of those had a first degree or had been educated to degree level, he says. So MOOCs may not be opening up higher education to sectors of the population it hasnt reached yet.