MOOCs For All

Scalable ? Yes. Low cost ? Yes. Open ? Yes. For all ?
MOOCs : From Readiness to Opportunities

Developing Countries Perspective
Romina Hernndez
Raphael Mateus Martins
May 31, 2016

Semester Project
MIKE-E, Aalborg University
Abstract
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have received a higher attention in the past few
years. While developed countries show high numbers of attendants, developing
economies lag behind. In this paper, we summarise and establish the necessary
conditions developing countries must ameliorate to grant its inhabitants the access to
MOOCs. Through a series of analysis, we identify key opportunities for participants and
their environment in different time horizons. Our key findings support earlier evidence
that Education, English proficiency and general access to Technology are primordial to
benefit from MOOCs. In our final discussion regarding the opportunities MOOCs
provide in the short as well as in the medium and long run, we expose potential for
Education
Spillovers,
Complementary
Skills
Development
and
Entrepreneurial
initiatives. Our key findings and insights incite both researchers and policy makers to
undertake more thorough analysis and design key actions needed to achieve the desired
outcomes and access the benefits of MOOCs.
Keywords: MOOCs Developing Countries Education Spillovers Opportunity
Entrepreneurship Development Economic Development
Summary Table
Abstract.................................................................................................................................. 1
Introduction........................................................................................................................... 3
Research Methods.................................................................................................................. 4
Overview of the Project.......................................................................................................... 6
Literature review................................................................................................................... 7
Education, skills development and economic growth......................................................7
The sate of education in the developing countries........................................................10
Recent trend in education.............................................................................................. 15
MOOCs as platforms for learning..................................................................................17
Obstacles in the developing World.................................................................................21
Analysis................................................................................................................................ 23
Defining Necessary conditions.......................................................................................23
Key subjects and Education areas.................................................................................28
Regression Analysis and Results...................................................................................32
Discussion and implications................................................................................................34
Entrepreneurship Education, MOOCs & Economic development................................34
Education and spillovers in the workplace....................................................................38
Concluding remarks............................................................................................................. 41
Policy implication................................................................................................................. 43
Further research.................................................................................................................. 44
Annexes................................................................................................................................ 45
References............................................................................................................................ 51
Index of Tables
Table 1: Descriptive Statistics for Necessary conditions..................................................24
Table 2: Correlation Matrix. ...............................................................................................24
Table 3: Factor Analysis...................................................................................................... 25
Table 4:Nominal number of registrants per continent in subjects....................................29
Table 5:Share of registrants per subject between continents............................................29
Table 6:Share of registrants per subject within continents...............................................30
Table 7:Share of registrants per area between and within Continents............................31
Table 8:Heteroskedasticity-corrected linear regression.....................................................32
Index of Figures
Figure 1: Country readiness to benefit from MOOCs........................................................30
Figure 2:World Map of Education......................................................................................32
Figure 3:World Map of Access to MOOC Platform............................................................32
Introduction
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been considered by educators,
policy-makers, researchers and others as an innovative online learning platform that
has the power to democratise higher education (Garrido et al., 2016, p.11) and have
become widely accepted as a key tool that allows free access to high quality courses
provided by prestigious international institutions, for formal as well as informal
education (Brown, 2013 in Yousef, 2014, p.1). Numerous people consider that MOOCs
have the power to overcome barriers regarding geography, affordability, socio-economic
status, access to education and gender (Garrido et al., 2016, p.11).
The main objective of MOOCs is to provide higher education in a flexible,
accessible, low-cost and short-term achievable manner through university courses
regarding several subjects, to those individuals who are interested in learning (Powell &
Yuan, 2013, p.6). It has been demonstrated that the evolution of MOOCs is engaging
more individuals in the market, including Higher Education Institutions and private
organisations which are looking forward to take advantage of online learning (Powell &
Yuan, 2013, p.6).
Even though few North American scholars have pointed out that MOOCs are
going through a period defined by the Technology Hype Cycle concept, developed by
Gartner (1995) called through of disillusionment. However, Trucano (2013)
condemns articles forecasting the death of MOOCs, advocating they are highly
exaggerated. Roy Amara (2013), president of the Institute for the Future stated that:
We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the
effect in the long run".
Research aimed at analysing the reach and usage of MOOCs in developing
countries is still in its early stages. It is well-known that fewer people in the developing
countries than expected enrol in MOOCs. The information is scarce about who are the
individuals who decide or not to enrol, the barriers that must be faced culture,
language, infrastructure in these economies and what would stimulate the
participation in MOOCs. This information is primordial for policy-makers, MOOC
providers and employers to design strategies that allow the countries to benefit from all
the potential MOOCs can offer (Garrido et al., 2016, p.11).
In this paper, we summarise and establish the necessary conditions that
developing countries must ameliorate to grant its inhabitants the access to MOOCs.
3
MOOCs : From Readiness to Opportunities Developing Countries Perspective
Also, this paper is aimed at identifying the opportunities MOOCs create for its
participants in terms of acquiring knowledge, maintaining and developing
professional skills located in developing economies in different time horizons, and
how this benefits impact the local environment around the registrant.
Research Methods
Research on MOOCs is still in its infancy, the lack of availability of data on the
courses explains the scarcity of quantitative articles on the subject. Researchers have
therefore sought to raise and address different aspects of the topic in a more theoretical
approach with a few qualitative researches in a small population. One of the main aims
of the paper is to produce results which can be generalised up to a certain extent and
provide an insight on the potential MOOCs may have in the long-run. Our research
questions are, hence, the following:
What are the necessary conditions developing countries must ameliorate to

grant its inhabitants the access to MOOC platforms and knowledge?
Which opportunities do MOOCs create for its participants in developing

countries in different time horizons?
How may these opportunities impact the local environment around the
participant in developing economies?
We approach the questions in a descriptive and deductive design through
quantitative analysis which first, develops a robust basis of investigation which is then
complemented with theoretical notions that cannot, at the present moment, be explained
through statistical methods.
The first step was to define the basic conditions a country needs to access MOOC
education. We pooled data from diverse sources (cf. Annex A), with a coverage of 129
countries from every continent and 10 indicators. The original dataset covered 169
countries, however, as common, developed countries gure prominently among those
with good coverage, while developing countries and former socialist economies lack data
in important variables. The dataset represents hence, 129 countries without missing
values.
4
Semester Project May 2016: Aalborg University

We then use Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and the oblique oblimin
rotation procedure as we expect a certain degree of correlation between the two factors,
which is more representative of the real world. Furthermore, as the normality of the
variables is violated1, we use "principal axis factors" factoring method, as suggested by
Fabrigar et al. (1999), to extract the scores per country. We display the solutions in
comprehensive maps and a summary plot (cf. Figures 1, 2 and 3).
After having a clear picture of the country readiness, we investigate thoroughly
the share of attendants per subjects within and between continents through a series of
frequency tables composed by variables pooled from two sources: HarvardX Insights and
Harvard Dataverse platform (cf. Annex A.2.).
In the following step of the analysis, we combine the standardised 2 Factor scores
with variables pooled from mainly the Harvard edX MOOC 3 and the World Bank (cf.
Annex A.2.). Five countries from the previous database lack data on the important
variables and are hence, removed, which results in a final dataset of 123 countries for
the following regression analysis.
In the final step of the quantitative analysis, we develop an Heteroskedasticity
corrected linear regression, which offers the possibility of consistent standard errors and
more efficient parameter estimates as compared with Ordinary Least Squares (OLS).
The procedure involves two steps: first, an OLS estimation of our model, followed by an
auxiliary regression to generate an estimate of the error variance 4, and finally, a
Weighted Least Squares (WLS), using as weight the reciprocal of the estimated
variance5. This procedure is repeated for the six estimated models (cf. Analysis section
Table 8).
After summarising the results, we undertake a discussion around the findings
and what opportunities they may reveal at different time periods. Our discussion is
supported by several literature inputs which follow the same direction. The key findings
and insights in this section incite both researchers and policy-makers to undertake a
more thorough analysis and identify key actions to achieve the desired outcomes and
access the benefits of MOOCs.
1
2
3
4
Chi-square test for normality rejected the null hypothesis in most variables.
We transformed the Factor scores to a common scale by deducting the mean and dividing by the standard
deviation.
We were not able to utilise Dataverse data due to the level of aggregation in the data.
In the auxiliary regression (b) we regress the log of the squared residuals from the first OLS on the
original regressors and their squares. The log transformation is performed to ensure that the estimated
variances are non-negative. Call the fitted values from this regression u*. The weight series for the final
WLS is then formed as 1/exp(u*).
Cf. Gretel manual for specific information.
Overview of the Project

The remainder of the paper is organised as follows: The next section will scan
the theoretical literature supporting the paper. We will concentrate on the links between
Education and Development, Education In The Developing Countries and New Trends In
Education, more specifically, discussing the features of online and distance education,
ending the section with an introduction of the features of Massive Open Online Courses
(MOOCs). The following section discusses the opportunities and prerequisites
confronting, then, the latter with the current situation in developing countries. This sets
the base for the following section Analysis where necessary conditions will be
defined and several models will depict the various relationships between certain socioeconomic country conditions and number of registrants in MOOC courses. After the
analysis, we will discuss opportunities MOOCs may offer at the short, medium and long
term in the developing economies. The project finalises with a short summary of the
important findings which answers to the research question and introduces the
opportunity for possible policy implications as well as the need for further research. The
next framework summarises the overview of the paper.
Literature review
Education, skills development and economic growth
Among the factors that influence the development of a country, education per se
is fundamental. It has the power to promote peoples creativity and productivity, it
fosters technological progress and entrepreneurship (Ozturk, 2001, p.1; UNESCO, 2005,
p.41), strengthens civil society, improves social mobility and stimulates political
participation and democracy (World Bank, 2000, p.92). Moreover, it plays an essential
role procuring social and economic advances and improving the income distribution
(Ozturk, 2001, p.1).
The importance of investment in Human Capital in economic development has
been emphasized since the time of Adam Smith and early classical economists
(Psacharopoulos & Woodhall, 1985, p.15), where, specifically, education has been
demonstrated to have, both, direct and indirect effects on economic growth (ibid.,p.2021). The twentieth century has been called Age of Human Capital, when the main
factor that determines a countrys standard of living is, on the one hand, its people's
level of success in developing and applying their skills and knowledge, and on the other
hand, its capacity to promote health and education for the majority of the population.
Nevertheless, the causality relationship between education and development is not fully
established, even though there is strong evidence showing that most likely causality
comes from education to economic development, not the other way around (ibid., p.21).
Sustainable economic development in a country cannot be achieved without
substantial investments in Human Capital. Human Capital accumulation, in different
forms, has shown positive returns such as research, training, learning-by-doing, basic
education and aptitude building. The way education is distributed is important, indeed,
unequal education can have a negative impact on income distribution in most countries
(Ozturk, 2001, p.2-3). Primary and secondary education combined with health and
nutrition increases the workers productivity. While secondary education helps acquiring
skills and managerial capacity, basic science development, convenient selection of
foreign technology imported as well as the development of technologies and domestic
adaptation, are supported by the tertiary education. Secondary and tertiary education
represent an essential component in the foundation of government, laws, institutions
and financial system among others, crucial for economic development (ibid., p.3).
7
The overall productivity of capital is influenced by the level of education of the

labour work force. More educated workers will tend to innovate increasing everyones
productivity (Lucas, 1998 in Ozturk, 2001, p.4). The total productivity rises as the
average quality of education increases, therefore when the level of education of an
individual is increased, not only its own productivity is improved, but also the
performance of the people he interacts with. (Perotti, 1993 in Ozturk, 2001, p.4)
Low-income people are able to seek economic opportunities when they have
access to education. This improves the income distribution, favouring the environment
for development and growth. Several studies suggest that additional years of education
increase earnings and the rate of return varies with higher levels of education (Behrman
1990 & Psacharopoulos 1994 in Ozturk, 2001, p.3-4.). The income has been assumed as a
measure of the contribution of workers on the output. This means that the higher
incomes more educated workers earn comes from their higher productivity, representing
their contribution to the economic growth (Psacharopoulos & Woodhall, 1985, p.19).
Furthermore, education can be the main determinant of a persons health and
life expectancy. Educated men and women invest in their health and their childrens,
they also tend to earn higher incomes which allows them to spend more on food, leading
the way to smarter and healthier food choices. The link between education, health and
life expectancy, is a two-way street. Larger investments in education and Human
Capital are motivated by better health and lower mortality, because the rates of return
on the investments are higher when the expected working time is longer (Ozturk, 2001,
p. 5).
Growth and composition of trade in a country can be determined by education, in
terms of factor endowment, output and exports. This affects the aggregate growth rate
and therefore, the countrys macro-performance. Moreover, education contributes to the
systems capacity of borrowing foreign technologies in an effective way in order to
achieve technological advances and building capabilities in the industry (Ozturk, 2001,
p.3-4). Previous research proved that investment in physical capital is complemented by
investment in Human Capital and education, making the first more productive
(Psacharopoulos & Woodhall, 1985, p.20-22).
Both openness and investment in education together can result in a virtuous
cycle: openness and trade demands education and learning. On the other hand,
education enhances the export sector of the country making it more competitive. Trade
openness impact in growth in the long-term is highly influenced by the capacity of
people to use and absorb information and technology through trade and foreign
8

investment (Ozturk, 2001, p.5).
The wealth of a country is directly related to how many people are engaged in
employment and how productive they are in their work place. As we already established,
good education is directly related to economic development, moreover, it is the basis for
further development skills and learning in productive employment, throughout
individuals careers (International Labour Office, 2010, p.4-8). Skills development and
training is a crucial complement to basic education (ibid., p.9), which improves the
capacities and opportunities for people at work and increases the creativity and
satisfaction (ibid., p.4).
Strong evidence has demonstrated that the combination of good basic and
vocational education with good quality training promotes the development of capacities
and the pursue of social and employment opportunities among individuals. More
specifically, vocational education allows workers to learn the right skills (i.e. skills
that are required in the labour market) increasing workers and firms productivity, it
also stimulates innovation and development, encourages domestic and foreign
investment
which
leads
to
job
growth
and
decreases
unemployment
and
underemployment, increases wages and finally, reduces social inequalities and expands
the labour market (ibid., p.4-5).
Skills development and training have been assumed as completing the sequence
of life stages of learning (ibid., p.4). These can be viewed from a life-cycle perspective of
building, improving and maintaining skills. The stages can be outlined as follows (ibid.,
p.(4,18,19)):
Children: build its first skills through initial basic education, the groundwork
where an individual can develop its own potential. The benefits of these
investments are long-term.
Young people: consolidate foundation skills and develops core work skills (e.g.
literacy, numeracy, communication skills, teamwork, problem-solving skills and
learning
ability),
general
knowledge
and
professional
and
technical
competencies industry-based. This is provided by initial training.
Mature and older workers: upgrade, maintain and certify existing skills and
competencies while also acquire new skills, aligned with relevant competencies
in the labour market. This requires life-long learning.
Countries tend to focus in different elements according to what they consider
strengths or weaknesses in their own skills development systems (ibid., p.4).
Twenty-first century needs educated leaders with flexibility, confidence,

knowledge and technical skills to confront current economic and political realities
effectively, as well as trained teachers for all levels of education (World Bank, 2000,
p.92). In the current world, innovation and technological changes are important drivers
of economic growth (ILO, 2010, p.12). Both drivers require investments in workforce,
entrepreneurial skills and fixed capital. The rapid innovation world trend calls for
upgrading skills, not only to young people in schools, universities and training
institutions, but also to the current workers' generation (ibid., p.12). The information
revolution that is leading the economy nowadays, depends on educated workers; this
expansion is been sustained through the ideas coming from individuals with tertiary
degrees (World Bank, 2000, p.92).
Education provides the foundation for development, where economic and social
well-being is built upon on (Ozturk, 2001, p.2). Nevertheless, if governments want to
maximise growth they have to consider that educational investment is as important as
other forms of investment (e.g. physical, capital and social infrastructure) and which
forms of investment in education offer the highest benefits (Psacharopoulos & Woodhall,
1985, p.22). All forms of investments can generate externalities (costs and benefits) and
several studies have pointed out external benefits or spillovers of investment in
education such as: social cohesion, technological innovations, crime reduction, health
and nutrition standards, fertility and intergenerational benefits (ibid., p.53). It is
important to identify the externalities of different types or levels of education and when
investment in education can complement or help to increase the productivity of other
social investments (ibid., p.54).
The sate of education in the developing countries

Although the education system is widely developed in the most advanced
countries, emerging economies struggle to overcome different challenges and assure a
quality education. With the world population increasing exponentially, not only the
number of students achieving secondary school (World bank, 2000; Kapur, D. and
Crowley, M., 2008) but also, the proportion of students proceeding to Higher Education
(HE) have increased (ibid., p.26,27). The increase is more accentuated in the developing
world with, often, the rate of enrolment increasing faster that the rate of population
(ibid., p.27).
Even though the expansion of students in the developing countries is
incontestable, the quality provided by faculties, even among top universities, is
10

considered low (ibid., p.23). Universities focus on maximising the number of students
and maintaining professors at the expense of good infrastructures and equipment
enhancing education. The creation of "mega-universities" to receive as many students as
possible provoked over-crowded classrooms (Kapur, D. and Crowley, M., 2008, World
bank, 2000). The main reason behind the lack of conditions is due to an overall underfunding of tertiary education (ibid.). Public States in developing economies show minor
interest towards tertiary education compared to earlier stages of education (Kapur, D.
and Crowley, M., 2008). The explanation lies on the analysis of the return on investment
in the different levels of education. Psacharopoulos and Patrinos (2004) argued that the
returns are higher in primary and secondary school compared to the tertiary education
in developing countries. Also, investment at the HE level is considered more expensive
compared to the one at the primary and secondary level (Kapur, D. and Crowley, M.,
2008, p.25). Public institutions would hence, prioritise earlier stages of education and
diminishing the funding of tertiary education (ibid.). An update of the analysis on the
returns of schooling has showed an inverse result (Peet et al., 2015), where, contrary to
Psacharopoulos and Patrinos, rates do not show diminishing returns per year of
schooling and show higher returns for tertiary education, with variations between
countries, gender and other factors such as, for instance, being employed in a large
company. The return on investment on education presents a considerable flaw when
estimating the returns of HE, since they do not account for the potential positive public
externalities increasing entrepreneurship and job creation, better political and
economic governance as well as, the positive impact of university research may have
on the local and national economy. (World bank, 2000, Kapur, D. and Crowley, M., 2008)
The impact of low investment in tertiary education arises issues at different
levels. (i) The knowledge base of faculty members in developing economies is small and
limits its students' access to knowledge; (ii) teaching mode rather obsolete hinders a
more active and intellectual engagement based upon reflection and discovery; (iii)
students do not have access to good facilities and services and have difficult living
conditions; (iv) the lack of information on the labour market and flexibility of curriculum
and specialisation creates an "educated unemployment", (v) a lack of research agenda
which prevents scholars to update the knowledge of their background and react to
international impacts on their economy. (World bank, 2000; Kapur, D. and Crowley, M.,
2008; Obielumani, O.I., 2015)
Other factors are susceptible to have a negative impact on the quality of
education in the developing world. Students face a gap in knowledge complicating the
11
comprehension of more complex graduate studies. This is mainly because the knowledge
acquired at the secondary school level is insufficient or of low quality (World bank,
2000). Imbalances in the access to education also causes disparities in the diversity of
the student body. They encompass the gap between rich and poor students, gender
inequality and the availability in urban and rural areas (Chauhan, 2015; Kapur, D. and
Crowley, M., 2008). For instance, Peet, Fink and Fawzi (2015), found evidence that
investment in the urban area is likely to have higher returns compared to rural areas.
There is, hence, a need to broaden the access to higher education and minimise
the gap in the imbalances above mentioned. In several developing countries,
disadvantage groups racial, linguistic, or religious for instance as well as women,
struggle to access higher education. They are more likely to lack necessary previous
knowledge to pursue HE. More concerning, they are often ostracised of the education
system because of discrimination (Kapur, D. and Crowley, M., 2008). Fagbemi (1999)
talks about socio-cultural issues related to the attitude of people. He found evidence in
Nigeria, where a religious group (i.e. Muslim North) defies and repels all Western
education because of its Christian roots. The other main obstacle to education is the
budgetary shortages. At the individual level, Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs), even
small ones, are able to provide wider access to schooling in certain countries. Examples
show that, they enabled girls to pursue secondary school and decrease their drop rate.
Merit scholarship programs which motive students to access education and enhance
their personal investment (Kremer, M et al., 2013). At the HE level, the cost of
education widely overcomes students means. Tuition fees, but more broadly, the
purchasing of material needed, access to technology and the opportunity cost of not
working incapacitates and demotivates students with lower income levels and
insufficient information on the impact of education on future wages to pursue studies.
Furthermore, financial markets do not assure a secure access to student loaning rates
(World Bank, 2000). Distance also seems to have an impact on the attendance rate of
young pupils, with evidence of Afghanistan where per each mile to school, girls primary
enrolment drops 19 percentage points, whereas boys enrolment drops 14 percentage
points. (Kremer, M et al., 2013)
There is a dilemma in education in the developing countries, where on the one
hand, public universities depend highly on public funding and present lower or
inexistant tuition fees (World bank, 2000) and as the former fails, universities struggle
to offer proper conditions. Whenever they attempt to implement, there is a major
resistance, and if they succeed, the funds are centralised by the ministries and often the
12

budget is not in favour of higher education necessities (ibid.). The few funds the
university is able to obtain is hardly well invested due to a lack of authority and good
governance (ibid.). On the other hand, private institutions present relative expensive
tuition fees, which only the wealthier families and elite are able to afford unless
students are granted scholarships which concerns a minority (ibid.). In some cases, it is
even more costly to ensure the collection of fees than the amount collected (e.g. case of
Bangladesh North-South and Independent universities)6. To access education, if the
tuition is expensive, students seek grants and scholarships, they must prove their merit
through tests, when tuition fees are non-existent, entry examinations help the
university selecting candidates (Kapur, D. and Crowley, M., 2008). The problem in this
situation is that, not only examinations take place in the urban areas, where remote
students may not always access, but also, richer students are more likely to have
benefited from better secondary education (World bank, 2000) and will, furthermore,
pay expensive preparatory lessons to ensure their success (Almeida, 2001). The system
is largely against poorer and remote people who struggle to secure their place in a
university. (World bank, 2000)
Few developing countries are able to overcome some of the above mentioned
obstacles, for instance, Latin America and countries in transition succeeded in
increasing education among women and balance the gender inequality (ibid.), Asian
countries were able to more than double their research output in the past decade (ibid.).
But they all suffer from failures in the system of education. There is a differentiation at
the both the vertical level creation of different types of education institutions (e.g.
polytechnics, professional schools, etc.) and the horizontal level with the emergence of
private institutions. Financing, education quality and contribution to the socio-economic
development differs among the different forms. There has been an explosion in the
number of private institutions offering tertiary education, responding to the demand
public institutions are not able to fulfil. Around 60% of Brazilian students enrolled in
tertiary education attended private institutions by 2000 (ibid.). Similar situation is seen
in Indonesia with more than 1200 private universities against only 57 public
universities. Private institutions are considered important for the introduction of
innovations (Kapur, D. and Crowley, M., 2008), their detachment from the public State
allows them to avoid interferences due to political and financial instability as well as
daily pressures (ibid.). Sadly, they also show shortcomings in consistency regarding
quality, and they rarely assume the role of knowledge-producing (ibid.). Ramphele and
6
World Bank (2000).
13
Rosovsky (2015) characterise them as "Low-quality institutions mushroom". The vertical

emergence of different types of institutions responds to a demand of more diversity of
graduates to fill market specific skills and necessities. The fast expansion of the Higher
Education System (HES) is considered chaotic (Ramphele, M. and Rosovsky, H., 2015).
Furthermore, the emergence of the different type of institutions rely on market
competition, driven by cost, which leads to provision of low-quality education. (ibid.)
The HES in developing countries also faces obstacles posed by corruption and
deteriorating governance. The system provides an easier access to wealthier students,
the trend is augmented with places awarded through corruption, which may substitute a
better deserving candidate with another, thus, neglecting possible talents which may
increase the contribution to the further development of the system (World bank, 2000).
Additionally, many countries demonstrate low levels of governance, with Statecontrolled systems, where the government bodies have the power to assign and remove
university members (ibid.). This also restricts the freedom of research and undermines
the knowledge base in the education system of the country (ibid.).
Such critical conditions in the national economies leads scientists and skilled
workers to seek for better opportunities abroad. The past few decades showed an
increase in the level of internationalisation of education. Students migration flows from
developing countries to OECD countries, where they obtain better education and
knowledge. The underlying issue in this situation is the fact that a considerable part of
the educated migration decide not to return to the country, provoking a shortage in the
national stock of skilled people. The jargon defines this issue as "brain drain". However,
some authors argue that, nowadays, there is no need for actual emigration to provoke
"brain drain", the "camp follower" phenomena stresses that elite scientists in developing
economies have sought to match their education topics to the mainstream research
conducted in developed economies, as they shift their research focus accordingly, the
research conducted in the developing country does not match the national interest at the
moment (World bank, 2000 ; Kapur, D. and Crowley, M., 2008). Moreover, least
developed countries ban skilled immigration as they see it as a substitute to the local
work force, instead of a complementary input (Kapur, D. and Crowley, M., 2008). Also,
the emigrated students who decide to return, bring with them high levels of knowledge,
which could be seen as an opportunity for knowledge spillovers and positive
externalities. However, evidence has shown that, in most cases, they proceed with the
industrialised countries research agenda obtained abroad (World bank, 2000). In the
past few years, a few authors have searched for potential "brain gains" which could be
14

determined as net positive effect of the brain drain on Human Capital. Evidence showed
that, in low income countries with low levels of emigration between 20-30%
depending on the importance of country fixed effects there is a small positive net
impact of brain drain on the level of Human Capital (Beine et al., 2010). In the case of
brain drain, it is the role of the state to ensure its reduction. By studying the impact of
brain drain on the dynamics of income and wages in the sending country through
simulations, Pieretti, P. and Zou, B., (2009), found that "weak substitutability or
complementarity between different labour skills resulted in trajectories with pronounced
high and low income sequences, while substitutability leads to smoother income time
patterns". Hence, by altering the elasticity of substitution of skills, policies may reduce
brain drain or even create a brain gain.
Recent trend in education

The various issues depicted in the previous paragraph cannot be addressed with
a single policy, it needs a set of policies and actions taken at different levels of the
political, economical and financial sphere in developing countries. They need to expand
and fortify the Higher Education System (HES), increase its capacity and provide
solutions regarding the increasing demand in amount and quality of education. This
paper will focus in one rising solution within the HES.
Distance learning has been around since the middle of the last century, and has
increased drastically in the past few years 50% between 1997 and 2002 (British
council, 2003). Hence, many authors have depicted its potential to solve issues
encountered by developing countries. However, the scope of its implementation is, sadly,
also restrained due to the lack of preliminary conditions needed to reap the benefits of
distance learning. In the past, distance learning started with television and radio
broadcast, as the technology evolved, internet-based technologies offer a wider
opportunity. As they become more available (World Bank, 2000), the research focuses on
virtual education.
The first concern regarding virtual education is whether it offers the same
quality and opportunity as face-to-face learning. Many authors engaged in extensive
research comparing results, grades and students satisfaction (Russel, 1999), formalised
the results in statistical terms, and found no evidence of significant difference between
the two types of education. For instance, the combination of text with images, audio and
video in online education improves the learning experience (Da Silva, Freire, & De
15
Arruda, 2013). Since the more visually stimulating material the more it attracts the
attention of learners (Sun & Cheng, 2007), it is also likely to increase retention
(Dalveren, 2014). The opposition to this new form of education advocates lack of "peer
network" and interaction (Ninnes and Helsten, 2005).
Notwithstanding, taking into account the different issues mentioned in the
previous section, virtual learning may help reaching students in remote areas, providing
a life-long learning to adults and education to disadvantaged groups (e.g. women,
excluded cultural, religious and linguistic groups) (World Bank, 2000). It also addresses
common challenges encountered in the developing world such as, the cancellation of
classes due to the rate of absenteeism, the difficulty to attend classes due to
transportation inefficiencies, and offers a more flexible learning pace which benefits
students who have family, work and personal obligations and struggle to attend classes
during regular education schedule (Kapur, D. and Crowley, M., 2008). Moreover, courses
offered by certain foreign institutions, both in developed and other developing countries,
offer a higher quality compared to local alternatives. (ibid.)
Many scholars agreed to the fact that virtual learning is highly cost efficient
with low marginal costs (ibid.). However, fixed costs, especially initial investments, are
considered to be quite substantial (ibid.) due to its highly technology intensity (Pityana,
N., 2009). It requires IT infrastructures and online platforms (ibid.) as well as decent
access to internet signal (World Bank, 2000), which is not taken for granted in the
developing world. In particular in a continent such as Africa, where even though
internet penetration has highly increased in the last decade, reaching 28.6% of the
population, it is not widely available. Indeed, when looking at country access, the top 10
African countries account for 80% of the internet access of the continent, with 24%
divided between the remaining countries. Even within a country, internet access is
exclusively available in the urban areas, and most often only in the major cities 7.
Marginal costs occur once the course material must be updated, or re-designed to
meet education needs (Whale, A. M., Scholtz, B. M., & Calitz, A. P., 2015). Virtual
learning is highly critical in practice, where many aspects must be taken carefully into
account and measured before implementation. For instance, the length of video, the
quality of the content delivered, optimisation of interaction must be carefully designed
in order to offer a comprehensive learning experience (Whale, A. M., Scholtz, B. M., &
Calitz, A. P., 2015). The cost of the above may be quite high at the moment of the
creation and implementation, however, the re-use of material provides important
7
Information available at: www.internetworldstats.com/stats1.htm
16

economies of scale. (Whale, A. M., Scholtz, B. M., & Calitz, A. P., 2015)
Virtual education also rises concerns regarding the Human Capital knowledge.
The gap between developing and developed countries undermine the capacity for local
learners in the developing world to understand and learn from far-more advanced
education from the developed world. There is first, a process of "catch-up" that must be
undertaken in both secondary and tertiary education. Similarly, discriminated groups
are often characterised to have benefited from lower quality secondary education, hence,
they will struggle to cope with the level of knowledge (World Bank, 2000). Distance elearning from developed economies is often reproached not to have an adequate learning
material taking into account the situation and culture of developing countries,
undermining the relevance of the programme to local learners (Whale, A. M., Scholtz, B.
M., & Calitz, A. P. (2015)).
There are different types of distance education, which all define different aspects
and methods of learning. The following definitions were extracted from David Kember's
book and Gutterman, Brian, et al. paper:
Distance Learning: A form of learning that takes place where the teachers and
the students are in physically separate locations.[...] Traditional distance
learning includes the mailing of printed materials, correspondence between
teachers and students in writing, contact by telephone, and radio and television
broadcasts. More recently, distance learning has included E-learning.
E-learning: E-learning is learning that is enabled or supported by the use of
digital tools and content. It typically involves some form of interactivity, which
may include online interaction between the learner and their teacher or peers. Elearning opportunities are usually accessed via the Internet, though other
technologies such as CD-ROM are also used.
Flexible learning consists of a mix of face-to-face and distance learning with
extensive use of information and communication technologies. In the ideal, the
blend is chosen to optimise student learning
17
Open learning is described as a number of facets of openness, of which the

following are the most critical:
open entry;
study anywhere;
freedom to study at a time chosen by the student within a specified

semester;
high degree of openness over the choice of courses to make up a degree

program.
This paper will concentrate on the mix between e-learning and Open Learning through
the platform of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
MOOCs as platforms for learning

The Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) name was used in 2008 for the first
time by David Cormier, describing an online course that was initially created for a group
of twenty-five enrolled students to achieve study credits and also was opened up to
individuals worldwide interested in the subject: Conectivism and Connective
Knowledge. The result was over 2.300 participants enrolled in the course without
gaining credits or paying fees (Powell & Yuan, 2013, p.5). MOOCs have the following
main features, in contrast to conventional university online courses (Powell & Yuan,
2013; Haggard, 2013, p.10):
1. Anyone can sign in an online course without fees (i.e. open access).
2. Courses are aimed to embrace an indefinite quantity of participants (i.e.
scalability).
3. No academic time guides or support learners.
4. Is offered online.
Main objective of MOOCs is to assure open higher education through flexible,
accessible, affordable and short-term achievable university courses, for free or lower
costs aimed to individuals who are interested in learning (Powell & Yuan, 2013, p.6).
MOOCs are developed based on the ideals of open education, knowledge should flow
freely and the ambition to learn should not be limited by demographics, economic and
18

geographical circumstances. It has been demonstrated that evolution of MOOCs is
engaging more individuals in the market, including Higher Education Institutions and
private organisations looking forward to take advantage of online learning (Powell &
Yuan, 2013, p.6).
Different pedagogical propositions have led to different models of MOOCs
(Powell & Yuan, 2013, p.7; Haggard, 2013, p.10-11):
1. Connectivist MOOCs (cMOOC): based on connectivism theory of learning and
informal developed networks. It is aimed at exploring and experimenting new
ways of teaching outside the traditional settings of the classroom. These are
associated with their founding institutions. (e.g. Abathasca and Manitoba
Universities in Canada)
2. Content-based MOOCs (xMOOCs): are essentially an expansion of the

pedagogical models performed inside the higher education institutions. Uses
instructional methods to share the knowledge like presentations, testing and
quizzes. xMOOCs can be non-profit or profit orientated, depending on the
purpose they are designed for. They may depend on contractual and commercial
relationships between technology providers and Universities who create the
content. (e.g. Coursera, Udacity, edX)
Many factors influence students motivation to learn, such as: personal
development, professional identity, future economic benefits, enjoyment and fun as well
as challenge and achievement. MOOCs participants motivation to enrol have been
inquired by Belanger and Thornton (2013) at Duke University through a survey,
identifying four main categories of motivation (Powell & Yuan, 2014, p.9; Haggard,
2013, p.29):
1. Life-long learning or gain knowledge about a new specific subject. Completion or
achievement are not expected. Indeed, MOOCs learners attitudes, skills and
motivation are more similar to life-long learning students from traditional
universities than to degree programmes students.
2. Intellectual stimulation, fun and social experience.
3. To overcome barriers of traditional education options.
4. Curiosity and experimentation of MOOCs and online education.
Learners engaged on MOOCs come from all around the world where there is
Internet access. Regions where there is access to higher education to the majority of
19
population, shows a high density of participants in MOOCs (Gaebel, 2014, p.25). The
individuals that enrol in MOOCs are mostly highly educated people and students of
secondary schools which are likely to enter in higher education, seeing MOOCs as an
opportunity to gain knowledge and professional skills and intellectual stimulation
(Gaebel, 2014, p.25).
MOOCs participants have expressed enthusiasm about the MOOCs learning
format (Haggard et. al., 2013, p.5). Passive consumption or lurking in a MOOC is a
frequent pattern. Non-completion is not a relevant problem in this learning format,
lurking and auditing is also valid in terms of learning (ibid.). Indeed, the MOOC's
benefit perceived by users is the access to material of high quality and new ways of
collaborative learning. Until now, acquiring credit does not seem to be the main
motivation for MOOCs learners (ibid.).
Open education development allows the opportunity for sharing ideas,
interacting between teachers and learners worldwide and facilitates the engagement in
meaningful teaching and learning. Moreover, open education allows the shift from
traditional teaching models to learner-centered learning in higher education. More
Open alternatives to traditional higher education are emerging, such as (Powell &
Yuan, 2013, p.16):
Open Curriculum: learners are responsible for their own learning and ensuring that
they will learn what they need to meet their needs and requirements. Learners are able
to use different resources and activities of different disciplines to acquire knowledge.
Open Learning: provides learners the opportunity for being independent, selfdetermined and interest-guided learning. Instructors will generate and share ideas
through several activities, ensuring new understanding during the learning process.
Open Assessment: the knowledge that learners have acquired is carried out by peers
and instructors in the learning process, instead of being accredited by formal evaluation
and traditional education providers.
Open Platform: creating and maintaining a stable, intuitive and engaging user
interface for teachers and learners, supports an open education community which is
interactive and dynamic. Open standards and cloud-based provision facilitates the
exchange of information and data to platforms and services.
Nevertheless, MOOCs pedagogy has been matter of discussion and concern
(Powell & Yuan, 2014, p.11). Although it is very likely that the professors who design
these online courses have significant working knowledge of online pedagogy, xMOOCs
use mainly a knowledge transmission model, where the social learning experience is
20

missing. As Larry states: a technology-enriched traditional teacher-centred instruction
(Larry, 2012 in Powell & Yuan, 2014, p.11). In contrast, cMOOCs are learner-centred
and provide the opportunity to experiment with non-traditional forms of teaching. The
online community crowd-source creates networks that spread learning in ways that
often happens within universities classrooms to find answers to problems (Powell &
Yuan, 2014, p.11). Higher education institutions such as universities attended by
young qualified students and new start-ups, as MOOCs that are focused on
professionals or people who cannot afford or acquire a place in a traditional university
are not perfect substitutes. However, the combination of available technology and
new business models, allows the possibility for MOOCs to open a new low-cost market to
students who demand better performance (Powell & Yuan, 2014, p.11).
Higher education is facing the urgency of reforming itself to adapt to the new
profiles and needs of modern society. Tertiary institutions should expand the number of
places they offer in order to meet the growing demand but also adapt learning models
and programmes to meet the diverse needs of modern students (OECD, 2013, p.4).
Nowadays, students may interrupt their studies to take a good job opportunity and
resume their studies later. Other type of students prioritise life-long learning or a
constant improving of their skills, deciding, thus, not to graduate in a specific subject,
just select specific courses which help them achieving their needs (OECD, 2013, p.4).
MOOCs expand and facilitate the access to quality education to those who are
not able to afford it and the ones who do not have time or do not want to attend to
lectures. MOOCs allow flexibility in learning, teaching and time schedule for free or low
costs and increases the choices a learner can make between different courses (Gaebel,
2014, pp. 23-26). According to Siemens (in Bonk et. al., 2015), MOOCs are the outcome
of the contemporary society claiming for knowledge and life-long learning. In the
modern learning world, where the online connections and networks are increasing,
learners, scientists and even healthcare workers who are dealing with critical issues
require more direct, instant, boundless and broad access to knowledge. Unfortunately,
universities existing structure in terms of knowledge, are incompatible with the speed of
change of knowledge in the current world (Bonk et. al., 2015).
21
Obstacles in the developing World

MOOCs attempt to provide education as an easy-consumption commodity, such
as water and electricity to those who want to learn and cannot attend or afford
education (Sellingo, 2014). Nevertheless, there are some basic barriers that can prevent
students worldwide from participating in a MOOC experience (Godwin-Jones, 2014,
p.10), especially in the developing world (Boga & McGreal, 2014, p.2). MOOCs rely on elearning spaces and digital technology to achieve their main goal. There are many
developing countries lacking appropriate telecommunications infrastructure, access to
computers, technical knowledge and online learning as well as language skills (i.e.
English proficiency) (Boga & McGreal, 2014, p.2).
Once a MOOC has been implemented within a country, this creates a common
ground where participants may maintain interaction once the MOOC has ended,
collaborating and networking among them to share ideas and innovation with each
other, hoping this will lead to other insights (Liyanagunawardena, et al., 2013).
Nevertheless, before this dynamic of networking and collaboration can be reached,
literacy level, technology, interest, common language and willingness to share ideas are
required (de Waard et al., 2011 in Boga & McGreal, 2014, p.4).
The reality is that the average MOOC student has an undergraduate degree and
a full-time job. Eight students out of ten enrolled in MOOCs provided by the University
of Pennsylvania and University of Michigan had already received education and earned
a degree. In China, Brasil, India, Russia and South Africa, 80% of MOOCs participants
have a degree (Sellingo, 2014). This implies that MOOCs demand a minimum level of
education about basic skills, for example, a simple mathematics course. Furthermore,
MOOCs lectures are designed by professors that are used to teach well-educated
students in their physical classrooms, hence, they do not necessarily have the capacity to
attend the needs of those with different levels of education (Sellingo, 2014).
MOOCs have gained popularity worldwide, but still the main concentration of
MOOCs is in the United States with three main providers: Coursera, edX and Udacity,
which are experimenting size growing and also developing differentiated profiles
(Gaebel, 2014, p.3). The courses offered by the diverse MOOC suppliers can be classified
within three main categories: (1) preparation, (2) occupational and (3) enrichment. The
majority of available courses currently fall into occupational and enrichment categories.
Thus, students enrolled in the courses tend to already have tertiary education
background (Sellingo, 2014). Thereafter, MOOCs may tend to reinforce the advantages
22

of those who already have a knowledge background, instead of providing education to
those who cannot access to it (Sellingo, 2014). Improved education and better access to
technology are worldwide prerequisites, without which MOOCs cannot accomplish their
main promise: access to education for everyone (Ezekiel Emanuel in Sellingo, 2014)
without being limited by local education opportunities and cultural considerations
(Godwin-Jones, 2014, p.9).
MOOC's users are invited to create their personal learning networks, including
sharing web-based resources of personal interest as part of the experience. Social media
and web services and different tools are used extensively by participants to create their
own digital artefacts (Godwin-Jones, 2014, p.6). Infrastructure like reliable electricity
and Internet access are not universally available and it has been generally recognised as
an issue. Even though there is a greater penetration of Internet capable cellphones,
MOOC suppliers have not designed courses or mobile applications adaptable to those
users who depend on their phones to access to the network (Godwin-Jones, 2014, p.6-13).
development of Internet access, mobile devices and wireless networks have the potential
to improve access and flexibility in education helping it to be border-less (McGreal,
2013, p.8).
Language can also represent an issue for those who want to participate in a
MOOC. The majority of MOOCs are taught in English (Cress, 2014, p.120) and even
though MOOCs suppliers have begun to address this issue (e.g. supplying subtitles in
the videos or transcripts made by volunteer translators, and other materials which are
available in multiple languages), the full potential of course cannot yet be reached. In
fact, subtitles and transcripts may help the understanding of readings and videos
activities, however, the participants are still unable to participate in forum discussions
or other collaborative course activities (Godwin-Jones, 2014, p.10), where a variety of
interactions takes place, such as homework resolutions, open ended discussions about
topics related to the courses, logistics, social talks, etc. (Rossi, 2014, p.1) which are
considered relevant for the success of students.
Bringing MOOCs into the developing world, should not follow the North
American model or try to replicate the same experience in the course. It should, rather,
be focused on taking advantage and making the best use of the technologies already
available (e.g. mobile devices, radio, etc.) to empower learners and achieve the main goal
of MOOCs: access to education for everyone, everywhere (Boga & McGear, 2014, p.3).
23
Analysis
Defining Necessary conditions
The previous section depicted several conditions and prerequisites needed to
follow a MOOC. In this paper, the analysis distinguishes sufficient and necessary
conditions. While the former encompasses all the conditions which will encourage a
person to follow a MOOC, the latter represents, only, the minimum conditions enabling
people from a country to access the online platform and benefit from the online courses.
We focus hence, on the latter, as we are interested in investigating the possibility for
MOOCs to emerge among developing countries, leaving behind conditions such as,
interest, willingness to share ideas and local culture as argued in the previous section
(cf. Boga & McGreal, 2014, p.4, Godwin-Jones, 2014, p.9). We chose the necessary
conditions based on the research lead by Liyanagunawardena et al. (2013). The paper
defines three important conditions: (1) Access to digital technologies (2) Infrastructure
(3) Language and Culture.
The access to digital conditions goes beyond access to internet. According to
Warschauer, (2003, p.6) it is embedded in a complex array of factors encompassing
physical, digital, human and social resources and relationships. Content and language,
literacy and education, and community and institutional structures must all be taken
into account if meaningful access to new technologies to be provided. We decide, hence,
to include measures of access to education and internet infrastructures in order to
approximate these conditions; the second level, Infrastructure, stresses the difficulty to
access in remote areas. We decided not to make a formal distinction in this analysis, as
we consider that access to public transportation is not a necessary but rather a sufficient
condition and acknowledge the fact that, as many authors revealed, at the current
moment, MOOCs benefit already educated people and in developing world, it means the
access is mostly available in the greater urban agglomerations (Emanuel, E. J., 2013).
For the last condition, regarding Language and Culture, we decided to include solely the
access to English language as one of the critical conditions to access and understand all
the material of MOOCs (cf. Fini A., 2009). More recent research showed that, even with
MOOCs offered in 16 languages, the majority of the courses 75% of all courses are
taught in English. (Shah, 2015 in Garrido et al. 2016, p.14).
24

We selected different variables regarding necessary conditions from different
sources. Education variables, for instance, were extracted from the Barro Lee's dataset,
Infrastructure variables from the World bank and the English language proficiency from
the Eurobarometer among other sources (cf. Annex A.1. for a detailed description). The
following table displays the descriptive statistics of the different variables. We can
depict a great gap in most of the variables among all 129 countries in the pooled dataset.
Variables
Mean
Std. Dev
Median
Min
Max
Education : Factor 1
Years of schooling
8.28
3.10
8.45
1.24
13.42
129
Years of schooling primary
4.75
1.55
4.98
0.96
8.90
129
Years of schooling tertiary
0.50
0.42
0.40
0.00
1.76
129
Access to MOOC platform (infrastructure + language)

Fixed broadband subscriptions
(per 100 people)
12.49
12.91
6.73
0.00
42.56
129
Internet users (per 100 people)
45.70
29.30
44.03
1.30
96.55
129
Secure Internet servers (per 1

million people)
312.47
585.09
30.66
0.13
2915.70
129
32.99
15.00
0.00
98.57
129
Percentage of english speakers

27.72
per country
Table 1: Descriptive Statistics for Necessary conditions. Source: Own calculation based on data
from diverse sources (cf. Annex A.1.)
The correlation matrix suggests the variables are in the overall highly positively
correlated among each other. We therefore opted for an Exploratory Factor Analysis, as
suggested as one solution for creating composite variables (cf. Research Methods
section). We restricted the number of factors to two, using both Kaiser's criterion and
the scree plot which showed consistent results (cf. Nardo, M. et al., 2005, p.43).
Variable
1 Years of schooling
2 Years of schooling primary
0.90***
3 Years of schooling tertiary
0.76***
0.73***
4 Fixed broadband subscriptions (per 100 people)
0.74***
0.70***
0.74***
5 Internet users (per 100 people)
0.79***
0.72***
0.72***
0.89***
6 Secure Internet servers (per 1 million people)
0.53***
0.53***
0.59***
0.80***
0.69***
7 Percentage of english speakers per country
0.53***
0.48***
0.44***
0.58***
0.51***
0.52***
Table 2: Correlation Matrix. Own calculations based on data from diverse sources (cf. Annex
A.1.)
25
The variables of education loaded highly on the first Factor, which we named
Access to Knowledge. MOOCs dispose of courses for different education levels, there
are some which there is no need for specific previous education and a certain level of
literacy is sufficient to understand the content of courses. There are, however, other
courses which require specific prerequisites, where the student needs more specific and
advanced cognitive capacities and a knowledge base.
Average years of schooling show a general education level which is necessary to
follow most of the courses in the MOOCs platforms. The primary years of schooling
define the minimum literacy a student may acquire and will hence be able to develop its
own skills later in his life in the more simplistic courses. Tertiary education depicts the
necessary cognitive capacity to access high-knowledge courses as it has been
demonstrated that most of the students following MOOCs already have or are currently
enrolled in tertiary education.
Indicator
Access to Knowledge
Access to Platform
Years of schooling
0.996
-0.013
Years of schooling primary
0.903
0.019
Years of schooling tertiary
0.523
0.344
Fixed broadband subscriptions (per 100 people)
0.068
0.933
Internet users (per 100 people)

Secure Internet servers (per 1 million people)
Percentage of english speakers per country
0.335
0.621
-0.126
0.924
0.165
0.466
Table 3: Factor Analysis. Own computations: Oblimin rotation with Principal axis factoring method
The Infrastructure variables as well as the English proficiency in the countries

appear to load highly on the second Factor. We hence decided to define it as the Access
to the MOOC platform, where there is a basic access to secure and stable internet
which is not taken for granted in the developing world, as well as an overall access to
the English language since the majority of courses are offered in English and equally
important, the participation in the online forum platform. The Annex B displays the
factor scores for each country included in the data. The following figures display the
results more interactively.
26

Figure 1: Country readiness to benefit from MOOCs. Source : Own computation based on Factor
analysis. Data : Annex A.1.(cf. Annex E for a wider representation of the figure.)
Figure 1 displays the interaction between the two Factors, where we see that most
European and rich countries figure in the upper right corner of the graph suggesting
that those are the countries with the highest propensity to follow MOOC courses. We
can also denote a few entities from Asia (e.g. Cyprus, Hong Kong and Singapore) and
Argentina which figure in that section. The lower left square is dominated by African
countries who clearly need to catch-up in both education, and access to the platform.
Asian countries (e.g. Nepal, Maldives and Bangladesh) as well as, for instance, Bolivia
and Paraguay need to increase both education and infrastructure. We may see, however,
differences even within these countries where, for instance, Bolivia scores extremely low
in education but approaches the threshold for the second factor, while Turkey is close to
the threshold in education but still has to improve access to the infrastructure and the
language. The three rectangles around the two thresholds dispose countries that have a
few potential to access MOOC platform but still need to improve access in either or one
of the necessary conditions. These zones represent a majority of Central and South
American as well as Asian countries, which need a small increase in the access to
platform (e.g. Uruguay, Phillipines) or access to education (e.g. Kazakhstan, Chile). We
can spot a few European countries who need to improve one of the conditions, for
instance, Portugal needs to improve its access to education in the remote areas of the
country, or improve the access to Higher Education which is accessible to a minority of
the population due to entrance fees and high selection criteria. On the other hand,
Albania needs to improve its access to the platform in terms of language and IT
infrastructure.
27
This analysis is aggregated at the country level and does not distinguishes the
gaps within the countries. Hence, the bigger urban agglomerations of these countries
are highly capable to follow MOOC course whereas, the remote areas lack infrastructure
or access to education as discussed in the Literature Review.
The next two maps were derived from the Factor scores which resulted from the
Factor Analysis, Figure 2 and Figure 3 represent Access to Knowledge and Access to
MOOC Platform, respectively. The factor itself does not have much meaning apart from
a rank from bad to good conditions going from the red colour to the dark blue.
Figure 2:World Map of Education. Source: Own illustration based on Factor Analysisdata from
diverse sources (cf. Annex A.1.)
Figure 3:World Map of Access to MOOC Platform. Source: Own illustration based on Factor
Analysisdata from diverse sources (cf. Annex A.1.)
28

Education seems to be addressed in the majority of Central and South America
while access to the platform and the English is still to improve. This may be explained
by the fact that Spanish is an important colonial languages alongside Portuguese (e.g.
case of Brasil), as well as the high level of inequality inside the countries suggest a need
to improve in the future years. A similar picture is observable in Asia, however, we must
take into consideration that it is the most largest and populated continent, hence, with
the higher number of remote areas. Africa lags seriously behind in the access to IT
technologies. As seen before, most of the access to good internet infrastructures is
concentrated in a very few top countries while the majority still seriously lacks the
access to a computer and to the a reliable Internet connection (cf. section Recent Trend
in Education). This study takes, hence, a long-run perspective where we have seen a
significant improvement in the last decade, and we expect in a near future, the access to
conditions to increase and enable the benefits of MOOCs in shaping knowledge and
skills among the population of these countries. The potential in the near future is axed
in the Central and South American economies and the North Asian countries, where the
level of education is widely spread. The minority in the urban areas in these economies
are able to follow courses through the diverse MOOC platforms.
Key subjects and Education areas

The remaining question is to acknowledge what courses these economies tend to
follow, and what type of knowledge they seek. For that purpose we accessed open
available de-identified data from HarvardX Insights and Harvard Dataverse (cf. Annex
A.2.), and separated the courses in its corresponding subject according to the edX
platform (cf. Annex C). Table 4 displays nominal and per capita values for number of
attendants per Continent in edX subjects. We can see directly that Computer Science is
the subject of predilection in each continent. We can see, of course, that the majority of
participants are located in North America, specifically, in the United States. We can
observe that, in absolute numbers, Asia mainly due to India as well as South
America and Africa do not lag extremely behind. Asia tops in a few subjects (e.g.
Physics, Electronics and Engineering) and advancing Europe in others such as, for
instance, Business & Management, Health & Safety, Public & Global Health, among
other courses. Of course, nominal values do not take into account the population in the
continent, but it suggest that all continents are participating in MOOC courses, with
different focuses. Hence, it is relevant to undertake such a discussion on the potential
those courses may have in the educated base of those continents.
29
Subject of the Course
Europe
North
America
Asia
Africa
South
America
Oceania
Number of participants
Biology & Life Sciences
22147
37638
18461
3573
5856
2121
Business & Management
4156
8434
5493
1607
985
464
Chemistry
23375
55434
16814
3067
5787
2243
Computer Science
105492
217664
124556
37249
25359
10209
Economics & Finance
4949
9916
6431
2464
1563
383
Electronics
10073
12256
27892
5059
3832
420
Engineering
2572
4463
5710
632
1168
53
Ethics
2668
5624
2241
465
517
188
Health & Safety
30594
55207
38384
16897
9002
3727
History
15534
33182
16577
2545
4066
2042
Humanities
17480
25262
11812
1485
4131
1338
Laws
73
369
48
18
13
Literature
6019
15260
5408
795
1652
629
Philosophy & Ethics
29818
45145
30796
5786
9288
3179
Physics
6854
7934
10558
1511
2465
217
Table 4:Nominal number of registrants per continent in subjects. Source: Own calculation
based on data from HarvardX Insights and Harvard dataverse (cf. Annex A.2.)
Per-capita percentages (cf. Table 5 below) show as expected higher values for
North America and conversely, Asian figures fall back due to its extensive population.
We can also denote very low values Africa, which suggests that those are the continents
with higher gaps in terms of access, whether between countries within the continent,
whether between regions or areas within each one of the countries. South America focus
in subjects such as Electronics, Engineering and Physics, which are the same
preferences in Asia. Africa apart from Electronics, which is also the biggest proportion
shows a relative higher share in Economics & Business and Health subjects.
Europe
North
America
Asia
Africa
South
America
Oceania
Comparison between Continents

17.55%
38.70%
2.47%
1.79%
8.30%
31.18%
15.16%
39.91%
3.38%
3.71%
6.43%
31.40%
Chemistry
15.38%
47.30%
1.87%
1.28%
6.81%
27.37%
Computer Science
15.81%
42.32%
3.15%
3.54%
6.80%
28.38%
Economics & Finance
16.30%
42.37%
3.57%
5.14%
9.21%
23.40%
Electronics
20.76%
32.76%
9.70%
6.61%
14.12%
16.06%
Engineering
20.10%
45.24%
7.53%
3.13%
16.32%
7.68%
Ethics
17.73%
48.48%
2.51%
1.96%
6.14%
23.18%
Health & Safety
14.95%
35.00%
3.17%
5.23%
7.87%
33.79%
History
14.37%
39.80%
2.59%
1.49%
6.72%
35.03%
Humanities
20.47%
38.38%
2.33%
1.10%
8.65%
29.07%
Laws
9.59%
62.87%
1.06%
1.50%
3.05%
21.93%
Literature
14.38%
47.30%
2.18%
1.20%
7.06%
27.88%
Philosophy & Ethics
17.25%
33.89%
3.01%
2.12%
9.61%
34.12%
Physics
24.20%
36.34%
6.29%
3.38%
15.56%
14.21%
Psychology
14.41%
35.47%
2.13%
1.60%
5.51%
40.88%
Public & Global Health
16.57%
32.90%
3.49%
5.64%
9.91%
31.49%
Table 5:Share of registrants per subject between continents. Source : Own calculations based
on per capita values. Data: HarvardX Insights and Harvard dataverse (cf. Annex A.2.)
30

Hence, a better idea would be to investigate which are the most preferred
subjects within each continent. Table 6 displays proportions based on the standardised
values of participants.
Europe
North
America
Asia
Africa
South
America
Oceania
Comparison within Continents

7.15%
6.46%
5.28%
3.89%
7.06%
6.85%
1.34%
1.45%
1.57%
1.75%
1.19%
1.50%
Chemistry
7.55%
9.51%
4.81%
3.34%
6.98%
7.24%
Computer Science
34.06% 37.34%
35.64%
40.58%
30.59%
32.96%
Economics & Finance
1.60%
1.70%
1.84%
2.68%
1.89%
1.24%
Electronics
3.25%
2.10%
7.98%
5.51%
4.62%
1.36%
Engineering
0.83%
0.77%
1.63%
0.69%
1.41%
0.17%
Ethics
0.86%
0.96%
0.64%
0.51%
0.62%
0.61%
Health & Safety
9.88%
9.47%
10.98%
18.41%
10.86%
12.03%
History
5.02%
5.69%
4.74%
2.77%
4.90%
6.59%
Humanities
5.64%
4.33%
3.38%
1.62%
4.98%
4.32%
Laws
0.02%
0.06%
0.01%
0.02%
0.02%
0.03%
Literature
1.94%
2.62%
1.55%
0.87%
1.99%
2.03%
Philosophy & Ethics
9.63%
7.74%
8.81%
6.30%
11.20%
10.26%
Physics
2.21%
1.36%
3.02%
1.65%
2.97%
0.70%
Psychology
5.68%
5.73%
4.41%
3.35%
4.54%
8.69%
Public & Global Health
3.33%
2.71%
3.68%
6.05%
4.17%
3.42%
Table 6:Share of registrants per subject within continents. Source: Own calculations based
on standardised values. Data: HarvardX Insights and Harvard dataverse (cf. Annex A.2.)
As suspected, Computer Science is the major subject in all the continents, but it
is interesting to depict the difference in preferences in the subjects within the
developing continents: Asia, Africa and South America. In Asia, Health & Safety has big
proportion of students, similarly for Electronics which is the highest compared to the
other continents. Africa stays consistent with Health & Safety and Public & Global
Health. However, we can see that Computer Science as well as Economics, Business &
Management and Economics & Finance has a higher fraction compared with the other
continents. South America joins Asia regarding its interest in Health & Safety.
Furthermore, it tops in other areas such as Biology & Life Sciences and Philosophy &
Ethics.
It is interesting to detect the focus in each continent, however, the ultimate
question is to investigate what is the positive impact MOOCs may have. In other words,
understand which areas may be stimulated in each continent and countries. Moreover,
discuss solution on how it may be achieved? To answer these questions we divided the
31
subjects into two main categories: (1) Research and (2) Entrepreneurship. For the first,
we distinguished research in Natural Sciences from Social Sciences, based on our
personal judgement. Annex C details each course and its assigned subject 8.
Entrepreneurship encompasses Entrepreneurial Education courses enhancing the
skills of an entrepreneur or increasing its motivation towards pursuing its own venture
and
Entrepreneurship
Education
classical
education
focuses
mainly
on
entrepreneurship and tools on how to open a business. These three areas are seen to
enrich the education and technology level of the country and leading ultimately to a
certain level of development. This aspect will be discussed extensively later in this
paper. Table 7 displays the importance of the three categories in each continent.
Type of Course
Europe
North
America
Asia
Africa
South
America
Oceania
Comparison between Continents

Nominal
Research
Entrepreunership
per capita
Research
Entrepreunership
Percentage
Research
Entrepreunership
Social Sciences
Natural Sciences
Entrepreuneurial Education
Social Sciences
Natural Sciences
Social Sciences
Natural Sciences
Population (in millions)
59480
89110
68275
80.16
120.09
92.01
15.79%
16.77%
16.02%
742
114741
158361
128344
200.60
276.85
224.38
39.52%
38.65%
39.07%
572
71405
104756
92343
16.24
23.82
21.00
3.20%
3.33%
3.66%
4397
24468
31528
22471
20.89
26.92
19.19
4.12%
3.76%
3.34%
1171
16001
24807
17699
38.56
59.78
42.65
7.60%
8.35%
7.43%
415
6045
8352
7002
151.13
208.80
175.05
29.77%
29.15%
30.48%
40
Social Sciences
Natural Sciences
Social Sciences
Natural Sciences
2.29
1.07
1.32
48.91%
22.85%
28.24%
2.49
0.60
1.44
54.99%
13.21%
31.80%
3.16
1.94
3.79
35.54%
21.82%
42.64%
5.21
3.72
2.51
45.54%
32.54%
21.92%
2.19
1.28
0.73
52.21%
30.52%
17.27%
1.90
0.06
1.21
60.08%
1.80%
38.12%
Comparsison within Continents

Standardised Research
Entrepreunership
Percentage
Research
Entrepreunership
Table 7:Share of registrants per area between and within Continents. Source: Own calculations.
Data: HarvardX Insights (cf. Annex A.2.)
Europe, North America and Oceania show, as previously seen, higher per-capita
percentage in every discipline. However, between the three other continents, we can
conclude that South America has the bigger potential to follow MOOCs and tops in
Research, especially in Natural Sciences. Africa follows in Research in Natural Sciences
while Asia follows in Entrepreneurship. Within the continents, Asia has a higher focus
in Entrepreneurship, reaching 42% followed by Research in Social Sciences. Africa and
South America show a similar pattern with Research in Social Sciences at the top and
Entrepreneurship at the last place, but still reaching one fifth of the students in Africa.
From this we are able to see that South America has the higher potential to follow
MOOCs and is more concentrated in Social Sciences research, while entrepreneurship
lags a little behind but is still not negligible. Asia, shows more potential for
entrepreneurship in high-tech industries.
8
Note : In Annex C, we assigned Computer Science to the three areas. To avoid over-estimation, we
allocated the number or participants equally among the three areas. This implies an assumption where
participants follow aim exclusively one of these areas and they are equally distributed among them.
32
Regression Analysis and Results

To strengthen these results, we complemented the database on courses with
external socio-economic variables collected from, mainly, the World Bank (cf. Annex A.2.
with a description of the variables). We used the necessary conditions as independent
variables and use the socio-economic variables as country control variables. The
dependent variable is a the number of registrants weighted by the population of the
country. The courses which were not assigned into one of the three categories (i.e. Social
Sciences, Natural Sciences and Entrepreneurship) were excluded from the regression.
We start with three different models: (1) the first takes into account all the courses in
the three areas; (2) the second model restricts the analysis for the courses followed by
participants in the OECD countries; (3) the third repeats the analysis with participants
in economies outside the OECD. After controlling for each economic group
independently of the subject, we decided to focus for the analysis on the non OECD
countries. Therefore, we subset the data to the courses supporting Entrepreneurship,
research in Social and Natural Sciences, respectively. Table 8 display all the outcomes of
the models.
Table 8:Heteroskedasticity-corrected linear regression
All subjects
All
OECD
Non-OECD
Non-OECD
(E)
(SS)
(NS)
Dependent Variable
Participants (per capita)
+***
+**
+***
+***
+***
+***
Independent variables (necessary conditions)

Education
+***
+*
+***
+**
+***
+**
+***
+***
+***
+**
+***
+***
+***
+**
+**
+**
-***
-***
-***
-***
-***
-***
+***
+***
+***
+**
+***
1230
340
890
356
356
356
R2
0.2754 0.2665
0.2101
0.2481 0.2993 0.2407
Adj. R 2
0.2718 0.2533
0.2047
0.2352 0.2873 0.2277
Access to MOOC platform

Control variables
Life expectancy
Unemployment
Easiness of doing Business
GDP (per capita)
Dependant variable: number of participants divided by the population of the country. The
dependent variable in per-capita terms implies near-zero results and standard errors. The table
presents only signs and significance levels for clutter purpose. The table with the exact estimates
and p-values is accessible in the Annex. Independent and control variables were standardised
except the rank of easiness of doing business.*,**,*** denote significance at the 10, 5 and 1
percent levels, respectively.
33
All the models present an acceptable goodness of fit explaining twenty to thirty
percent of the phenomena. In the first three models, life expectancy is statistically
insignificant with the level of registrants in the countries. Conversely, the better the
conditions to start a business as well as the higher the revenue per capita in the
country, the more people register and attend MOOC courses. This is an expected result
as it is widely agreed that developed countries represent the higher share of participants
in MOOCs. Similarly, we can see an absence of significance in the relationship between
the level of Technology and English proficiency with the number of registrants in OECD
countries. Those countries appear, thus, to already have a sufficient level of Access to the
MOOC Platform. Hence, the difference in registrants is not explained by the presence of
better technological infrastructures or number of English speakers. Education, however,
seems to have a positive significant relationship at the 10% level with the number of
individuals enrolled in online courses. Similarly, the level of unemployment is consistent
with the average number of participants, suggesting that, unemployed people may seek
education opportunities on the online platform to improve their skills in order to acquire
a new position or engage in self-employment. On the other hand, Non-OECD countries
show a consistent positive relationship with the two factors of Necessary Conditions.
Countries with better levels of education and infrastructure as well as English
proficiency have higher share of participants. The level of unemployment in these
countries seems to follow the same relationship of OECD countries. However, the labour
markets function differently between the countries, therefore it is important to
investigate further as the market and employers may recognise and accept, or not,
online education with or without certificates. The absence of recognition would be
expected to impact the willingness to obtain a certificate or to prefer pursuing selfemployment.
After seizing the overall picture, we concentrate our analysis in the Non-OECD
countries and distinguish between the different education areas. As expected, the
necessary conditions are positively with at least 5% significance level related with
the number of participants. Similarly, an adequate Easiness of doing Business is
positive and highly significant with the number of participants. The latter is especially
relevant for the first area (i.e. Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurial Education), which
supports the idea that people seek to gain entrepreneurial skills through MOOCs.
Indeed, according to Garrido et al. (2016, p.35), around 30% of MOOC users aim at
obtaining
entrepreneurial
knowledge.
Nevertheless,
the
relationship
between
entrepreneurship and the level of unemployment does not show any significance level.
34

We therefore expect employed people to seek entrepreneurial knowledge, whether to
improve their skills at the work place and be empowered to pursue entrepreneurial
initiatives within the company (i.e. corporate entrepreneurship); whether to merge his
current knowledge with necessary entrepreneurial skills to pursue a new venture (i.e.
spin-off or unrelated start-up). These arguments are also supported in the recent
research by Garrido et al. where the majority of MOOC users are currently employed
and hope to get better skills and implement them in their workplace.
The research environment shows identical results with the previous analysis on
Non OECD countries with the sole exception of an absence of significance result in the
relationship between the GDP per capita and the share of registrants in the country for
courses supporting research in Natural Sciences. Research requires, hence, as expected,
good levels of education and access to technological infrastructure as well as the
necessary language skills to follow MOOC courses and interact in the platform.
Unemployed academics would hence, seek necessary technical capabilities to increase
their knowledge base and augment the chances to access a new position in a research
institute within the country for instance, access a job opportunity in the capital city
or a more developed urban area or abroad, expecting better opportunities in terms of
either or both quality of life and professional achievement (i.e. brain drain). They also
may seek to access western knowledge in order to align their cognitive capabilities and
research prospects (i.e. camp follower). The lack of significant relation between subjects
in Natural Sciences and the wealth of the country suggest that Natural Sciences is
primordial in the activities of any country, independently of their levels of revenue,
especially as the subjects are related to Medicine and Health in general.
Discussion and implications

Entrepreneurship Education, MOOCs & Economic
development
Entrepreneurship can be described as a positive mindset that is directed to
identify and recognise value (Al-Atabi, 2014, p.1). Schumpeter defines the entrepreneur
as the key driving force in economic development and its main role is to innovate
(Shrivastava et al., 2013, p.1). Not only they build new businesses, which represents a
source of employment for the population. They also stimulate competition, with the
increase of productivity by using technology. Entrepreneurial initiatives contribute,
35
thus, to the development of the national economy, conducing to economic growth

(Shrivastava et al., 2013, p.1; Mondal et al., 2015, p.1).
Entrepreneurial activities can be understood as the discovery, evaluation and
exploitation of opportunities as a competitive business (Mondal et al., 2015, p.1) within a
defined framework, according to an institutional arrangement in the country
(Shrivastava et al., 2013, p.1). Successful entrepreneurship combined with the force of
big corporations are essential for a nations economic development (Shrivastava et al.,
2013, p.4).
Block and Wagner (2006 in Deli, 2011, p. 39) define necessity entrepreneurs as
the individuals that are involved in self-employment because of limited opportunities in
the labour market and do not see better alternatives to earn money. On the other hand,
opportunity entrepreneurs are driven into self-employment pursuing the idea of start
a new business based on the identification of unexploited opportunities (ibid). Deli
(2011, p.39.) states that necessity entrepreneurs do not tend to be creative people and
frequently their abilities in terms of employment are low. Conversely, opportunity
entrepreneurs often are individuals characterised by higher levels of abilities and
creativity and therefore, tend to fit in the superior levels of income distribution, before
and after being self-employees.
It has been observed that if people are enrolled in stable employment, business
start-ups tend to decrease, this means that, as economies become more developed
entrepreneurial activity tends to decrease (Shrivastava et al., 2013, p.2-4). When a
business opportunity is exploited it is expected to contribute to the economic
development,
but
if
the
entrepreneurial
initiative
is
based
on
necessity
entrepreneurship, it does not necessarily provide positive externalities on the economy.

Indeed, countries with higher propensity for necessity entrepreneurship and countries
with low levels of entrepreneurship tend to be ranked at the same level (Shrivastava et
al., 2013, p.3).
Shrivastava et al. (2013, p.3) through the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor
(GEM) research program (i.e. annual assessment of the national level of entrepreneurial
activity) show evidence that, for example, low-income countries like Peru, Ecuador and
Uganda have high-levels of self-employment, consequently they present high levels of
entrepreneurial activities. On the other hand, countries like Japan, Sweden and
Germany (high-income countries) have lower levels of entrepreneurial activities,
measured by the GEM program.
36

In the developing countries more than half of the total workers are involved in
self-employment. Even though there are some opportunity identification based
entrepreneurship cases, two thirds of these individuals have no better options. Selfemployment in the developing world often is low in terms of productivity, but when the
countries and its institutions become more developed, the availability of options in the
wage sector rises. Then, governments of developing countries should not necessarily be
pleased with high levels of self-employment, because this can mean an unproductive use
of resources (Margolis, 2014, p.20).
Economic development strategies of a country should focus in building up and
strengthen the conditions that improve infrastructure, labour market, financial
markets, policies and laws which all will help in establishing a favourable environment
for entrepreneurship and management skills development. Developing countries where
the education background is weak developed necessity entrepreneurship. Therefore,
education and training should be targeted, both in elementary and secondary levels.
When more population gets involved in entrepreneurship based on opportunities more
than necessity the level of economic development may increase (Shrivastava et al., 2013,
p.4). All this may attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), which fosters technology
advancements, improving imports, exports, revenues from taxes and generate
employment which in developing countries, may help people leave self-employment as
an option to work (Shrivastava et al., 2013, p.4). Indeed, there is a new form of
upgrading an economy that arises from the global interaction, where an increasing
number of local entrepreneurs with innovative initiatives about services and products
are receiving funds from already western established firms. This has been called
entrepreneurial upgrading. In developing economies the new venture creation through
investments from abroad brings financial capital to the region, but also knowledge
diffusion opportunities, learning and the building of capabilities (Park et al, 2016, p.2).
Interaction with international agents allows firms in developing countries getting access
to the knowledge frontier, learning advanced processes of management and production
and then acquiring capabilities (Park et al, 2016, p.13). In the case of entrepreneurial
upgrading, the investment takes place from the relationship between entrepreneurinvestor, which actually can result in knowledge transfer from the investor, who may
have deeper knowledge about the product segments and sectors and managerial advices,
being a valuable information for entrepreneurs (Park et al, 2016, p.25).
The twenty-first century global market requires a higher entrepreneurship
orientation in the society (Romero, 2013, p.1). All firms need innovation, graduates need
37
skills, knowledge and motivation to create organisations and also improve the
performance of the existing ones (Welsh, 2013, p.52). For this reason, entrepreneurship
initiatives are being started to be included in the curriculum of all levels of education
around the world, from elementary school to life-long learning, aligning the education
with the needs of the current workforce (Welsh, 2013, p. 52; Romero, 2013, p.1). The
number of undergraduate programmes including entrepreneurship courses is raising
and it has been agreed that it has several positive effects and benefits (Sheshinski et al.,
2007 in Al-Atabi, 2014, p.1). These benefits include the cultivation of collaborative,
thinking and communication skills that are highly cherished by employers. Moreover,
they can boost innovation, improve scientific research and knowledge generation, as well
as social and cultural thinking. (Welsh, 2013, p.52).
Entrepreneurial education helps developing skills such as identifying winning
business models, managerial competencies, core competency creation, loyal customer
base building through brand visibility and sustainable growth (Mondal et. al., 2015, p.2).
Furthermore, skills regarding primary subsystems of a business procurement,
processing, marketing, distribution and selling, sales proceeds, human resources and
financial management can hardly can be inherited, they usually must be acquired
through education (ibid.). Indeed, it has been demonstrated that entrepreneurs with
entrepreneurial education are three to four times more likely to start up a business and
will earn 20%-30% more than those who are at their same level of education, but
studying in other fields. In summary, there is a general agreement that entrepreneurial
education worldwide impacts positively entrepreneurship skills and motivation. (Mondal
et al., 2015, p.1).
Since entrepreneurship is an active and innovative oriented activity, besides the
management, technical and financial skills that are needed (Al-Atabi, 2014, p.1; Mondal
et. al., 2015, p. 3), its education should engage students as active agents in the learning
process
in
more
constructivist,
learning-by
doing
and
active
experiential
methodologies (Solomon et. al., 2002 in Romero, 2013, p.1). Students must not only
listen to lectures, they also should be involved in them through problem-solving, writing,
discussing and other active practices (Chickering et. al., 1987 in Romero, 2013, p. 1).
MOOCs cannot replace traditional Entrepreneurship Education, but offer a viable,
affordable,
self-paced instruction and flexible complementary alternative with
worldwide reach and can absorb part of the high demand for knowledge regarding
entrepreneurship and business (Welsh, 2013, p.62-63). Moreover, MOOCs allow the
opportunity to learn with the social support learning networks and online partners
38

provide (Welsh, 2013, p.62).
MOOCs bring the flexibility that is needed to spread entrepreneurial education
helping students to recognise opportunities, acquire resources and found firms (Mondal
et. al., 2015, p.1). Additionally, MOOCs have the capacity to be designed in a way that
includes several types of methodologies for learning, such as lectures, tutorials, online
quizzes and even projects that stimulate team-work practices (Al-Atabi, 2014, p.3).
Moreover, MOOCs have the capacity to combine different learning methodologies as, for
example, the Game Based Learning (GBL), which offers a safe and interesting
opportunity to develop entrepreneurship capacities by promoting learning through
practical and applied competencies and knowledge (i.e. learning by doing) (Romero,
2013, p.4).
MOOCs provide the opportunity for older learners to acquire new skills or
update their knowledge, whether for increase the chances for employment, whether to
be promoted or even consider starting their own small business (Welsh, 2013, p.55).
Furthermore, MOOCs can play a crucial role in bringing learning opportunities to
employees within an organization and therefore promote their innovation process, alias
corporate entrepreneurship (Mondal et al., 2015, p. 1, Welsh, 2013, p.55). Finally, in
countries with low access to higher education undiscovered talents could manifest
through MOOCs, bringing a new wave of innovation. (Koller, 2012 in Welsh, 2013, p.56)
There is a new strategic management tool gaining popularity among the
corporations of the world, called corporate entrepreneurship. Mondal et al. (2015, p. 3),
defined the term as an emerging corporate strategic management tool, [which is]
gaining popularity among top corporates of the world [...][and] involves empowering
employees with autonomy and financial support to transform their creative ideas into
commercial products through leveraging on their entrepreneurial talents. The result
shows an optimisation of the outputs of employees and constantly reshaping and
rejuvenating the scope of the operations of the firm, according to the techno-socioeconomic realities worldwide. Employees can, hence, sharpen their entrepreneurial
competencies through MOOCs. (Mondal et al., 2015, p. 3)
It is safe to conclude that Entrepreneurship Education is essential for economic
growth and to improve the quality of life of people in a country. MOOCs have the
capacity to provide education with its easy scalability, flexibility and cost advantage as
well as accentuate the process of learning entrepreneurial competencies. Moreover,
MOOCs have the capability to ensure the delivery of high quality content and access to
quality education to all interested people which can be a large heterogeneous audience,
39
including large and underprivileged population (Mondal et al., 2015, p. 2-3). MOOCs can
serve as a complementary alternative for Entrepreneurial Education in smaller Higher
Education Institutions, regarding to business and non-business disciplines. (Welsh,
2013, p.62)
Finally, MOOCs can bring back the school-dropouts to virtual classrooms at
remote places and motivate them to engage in entrepreneurship initiatives. Improving
entrepreneurial competencies among population may increase accelerate the process of
new venture foundation, generate value added services and products and therefore,
increase economic growth and employment to ultimately improve quality of life in a
nation (Mondal et al., 2015, p. 2-3).
Education and spillovers in the workplace

Professional learning in the modern workplace is crucial to develop and
maintain the knowledge to solve new problems (Hager, 2004 in Milligan et al., 2014,
p.199). Pursuing education to acquire skills needed for daily work activities often is a
mix between formal and deliberate learning with non-formal and reactive learning
(Eraut, 2000 in Miligan et al. 2014, p.199). As positions become more specialised, this
means that the learning needed for specific roles need to be personalised (Miligan et al.
2014, p.199). Moreover, work roles are constantly changing and professionals have to
continually use as base existing knowledge across diverse disciplinary and sectoral
frontiers, establishing relationships to acquire new knowledge (Engestrm, 2009 in
Miligan et al. 2014, p.199).
Conventional ways of professional learning and training such as courses or
workshops often do not meet and exploit the link between learning and practice in the
workplace (Littlejohn & Margaryan, 2013 in Miligan et al., 2014, p.198). Formal
learning opportunities are raising through MOOCs, which provides free and flexible
access to formal education in a massive way worldwide. Furthermore, MOOCs allow and
support the professional learning, enabling the opportunity to link informal and formal
learning (Miligan et al. 2014, p.197). Also, this kind of courses support the connection
and interaction between learners with diverse experiences and resources and also allow
learners to adapt and personalise their learning process according to those specific skills
and competencies required in their jobs (Miligan et al. 2014, p.198).
Educating a worker often provides benefits through externalities, known as
spillover effects, which have the potential to increase what others can learn from him
40

and what he can learn from others (Niehaus, 2012, p.1). The crucial assumption is that
education has, not only, a direct and private effect for the individual who receive
education, but also an indirect effect in the productivity of workers when individuals
who have not invested in higher education interact with colleagues who have (Martins &
Jin, 2010, p.5). The interaction between workers and co-workers with different types
and levels of education different knowledge and ideas encompasses the whole
range of possible spillovers which can be diffused through education (Backes-Gellner,
2011, p.16).
Education has two direct effects to the individual. (1) The first is a rather
straightforward effect which increases the knowledge base of the student. It widens its
knowledge on a specific subject which may be crucial in its daily activities. (2) Education
research proposes a second view where, through education, the individual learn skills
and techniques on how to acquire and retain new knowledge learning to learn. This
is considered as the development of foundational skills (Niehaus, 2012, p.1) and allows
an increase in the personal absorptive capacity.
The indirect effects of education occur with the interaction between agents with
diverse skills and provides a background for spill overs (Niehaus, 2012, p.5). Lucas
(1998) states that most of what we know we learn from other people (Lucas 1998 in
Niehaus, 2012, p.5). Therefore, spillovers take place randomly through interaction
between individuals in the workplace, such as observational learning or knowledgesharing in team production. Many spillovers are truthfully unintentional (Niehaus,
2012, p.5). Therefore, training and education not only improve the productivity of the
worker who gets educated in a firm, but also those less-well-educated who work with
him (Blundell et al., 1999, p.15). Similarly, with the improved absorptive capacity, the
educated worker will be able to acquire new knowledge from colleagues at a higher level.
Therefore, education provides indirect positive spillovers which take place at the
workplace and profits both the educated (increasing what he can learn from others,
more and less educated, with similar or different knowledge) and the non-educated
(increasing what others can learn from an educated individual). (Niehaus, 2002, p.1)
Finally, interactions may take place in an external environment. Indeed, several
researchers state that the transmission of codified and tacit knowledge can take place
outside the organizational boundaries in an effective way through interpersonal
interaction in social communities. (Park et al.,2016, p.27)
In the context of MOOCs, the direct effect of education is rather straightforward,
given the individual possesses the prerequisites, knowledge base and linguistic, to
41
efficiently follow the videos and understand the course material. The self-paced aspect of
online courses allows the individual to organise his learning pace and schedule,
furthermore, the individual will learn how to seek additional information whether by
increasing its interaction capacity within online forum platforms, or individually
through books or online search allowing its learning capacity and foundation skills to
increase. While we may predict the rise of such knowledge effects, we cannot estimate
the speed of learning or scope of education as it highly depends on the individual
characteristics, and may, thus, vary substantially. The indirect effect of MOOCs is then
conditioned by the last argument, what a MOOC student may learn from a co-worker, or
what the latter may learn from him, depends on the education skills and knowledge
base he acquired through MOOCs. In the more optimistic situation, the MOOC student
will be able to apply newly acquired knowledge in his daily activities, increasing,
probably, his efficiency, and co-workers may benefit from such effect by copying or
imitating actions taken by the colleague. The MOOC student may, furthermore,
understand what other co-workers, at a higher level or with different knowledge and
ideas, undertake and stimulate his own knowledge. This would explain the viral aspect
defined by Niehaus (cf. previous paragraph). However, even though, the knowledge may
be transmitted through social networks inside the firm (Niehaus, 2012, p.1) or in an
external environment through knowledge communities (Park et al.,2016, p.27), its effect
will most likely fade the further from the originally educated MOOC student the
information goes. There is, however, novelty and uniqueness regarding MOOC
education. Indeed, with its low access barriers both in terms of cost and absent
selection criteria the indirect knowledge spillover may become a direct effect if the coworker, or individual from a social community, decides to follow the same or a different
type of MOOC.
42
Concluding remarks
During the course of this paper, we have analysed the necessary conditions
required to follow MOOCs and the opportunities to gain from such access. The twentyfirst century has shown an increasing demand of professionals with specific technical
skills. Education has been demonstrated to have a strong link with the productivity and
innovative capacity of workers (Ozturk, 2001). As rich economies sought to increase the
Human Capital, literature shows that developing countries lag behind in terms of both
access to and quality of knowledge (World Bank, 2000). It should be, hence, in the
interest of developing economies to seek education alternatives and foster growth
through specialisation of the work force. Massive Open Online Courses aim at providing
education with no restrictions in a flexible, quality and low cost environment. They
could bridge general issues in the Higher Education Systems in developing countries
such as the exclusion of groups (e.g. gender inequality, remote access to local education
institution). However, the literature identifies potential limitations in the developing
countries (cf. Liyanagunawardena et al., 2013).
Through a Factor Analysis, we were able to identify two factor conditions
necessary to access MOOC platform and knowledge. A general access to education and
computer literacy as well as sufficient level of proficiency in English and general access
to stable and reliable internet network are key issues developing economies must
overcome in order to grant its population the access to online distance learning. The
illustration of the factor scores showed a general low level of readiness in Africa and
poorer Asian countries. Most Latin American economies as well as a few Asian countries
are in the transition zone where they must improve either or both factor conditions to
achieve a necessary general level to follow MOOCs. Even though the access to necessary
conditions is not achieved at the country level, high gaps within these economies suggest
the most developed hubs in the country have acceptable conditions to benefit from
MOOCs. Indeed, through an analysis of course attendance of several HarvardX and
MITx courses on the edX platform, we were able to denote this gap through an analysis
of nominal and per-capita number of participants. Furthermore, we were able to identify
the potential of MOOCs in developing economies by differentiating the subjects of
predilection in each continent. Computer Science is the preferred subject in every
continent. Moreover, while Asia specialises in technological fields with also high
43
attendance in Business & Management, shows to focus on rather entrepreneurial

courses. Africa, on the other hand, focus in Business Management and Health related
subjects suggesting a penchant for Social Sciences related courses. Latin America has a
focus in Health and Natural Sciences related subjects and shows, similarly to Africa,
higher share in attendance in Social Sciences related courses. These results are partly
consistent with the findings in a recent research by Garrido et al. (2016), where, through
surveys in three countries 9 from the developing continents, they found that the main
areas of interest are Computer Science, Business & Management and Social Sciences.
Our regression analysis supported the previous claim regarding the necessary
conditions, they are indeed positively significant related with the number of per-capita
registrants in the Non-OECD countries. Similarly, the relationship between easiness of
doing business and number of per capita registrants shows identical results. Another
interesting key finding is to see that countries with high levels of unemployment have,
also, a major number of course attendants in the research areas, while participants in
entrepreneurial courses do not show any consistent statistical relationship with
unemployment level.
These results raise a discussion around possible opportunities taking place at
different time horizons. The first one, rather direct and at the short-term, describes
opportunities in Education. Although longuely discussed by previous authors, we aim at
understand how this education affects both the individual and its environment. We
discussed the potential of having direct effects at the levels of the knowledge base with
the acquisition of new and specific skills in a rather small period due to the short-term
achievement aspect of MOOCs. Other smaller yet direct effects stress an increase in the
absorptive capability of a registrant and its possibility to learn by teaching. Indeed, not
only MOOCs increase the personal knowledge of the individual, but they also provide
the registrant with necessary tools to become more productive in his daily activities and
may give him the incentive to pursue opportunities with self-employment solutions.
Once again, this goes in the same direction of results found for the Colombia, South
Africa and the Phillipines, where the main aim of MOOC users is to develop skills and
even though they are employed they consider the opportunity to open their own
business. We try to deepen the discussion with potential externalities to the close
environment of the participant. We nominated Education spillovers as an indirect effect
of MOOCs, whether through a personal social network or through the interaction in the
daily workplace. Due to its low barriers, the potential of MOOCs goes beyond the
9
The research analysed the three following countries : Philippines , Colombia and South Africa.
44

knowledge spillover enabled through classical education system. We discuss a mixed
effect where an indirect effect may become direct the moment a registrant's
acquaintance decides to follow the same or a different MOOC. We introduce other
potential impacts at the medium term such as the rise of a corporate
entrepreneurship.
In
the
long
term,
with
the widening
access
to MOOCs,
entrepreneurship may rise, whether through spin-offs from the established company
where the participant worked previously, whether through personal motivation to
pursue self-employment to seize either an opportunity highly beneficial in terms of
innovation and development or respond to a necessity usually results in low valueadded activities.
Although the opportunities of MOOCs in developing countries seems promising,
the necessary time to access desired effects highly depends on public and private
institutions in each specific country.
Policy implication
The opportunities for policy implementations is quite high and we only include a
few solutions to increase the opportunity of achieving desired effects. The direct
recommendations from this paper concern, naturally, policies aimed at the improvement
of necessary conditions a set of actions aimed at reducing gender gaps, eradicate
poverty levels and promote the inclusion of disfavoured groups. Other indirect actions
might be taken at the overall infrastructure at the country level, such as the availability
of reliable public transportation to access urban hubs, widen the access to technologies
and improve internet access in remote areas. The third set of actions needs to target the
Education all over the territory : increase attendance to schools, include technologies in
the learning process as well as increase the level of language education and more
specifically English which is considered an essential language to efficiently utilise
computers and online platforms.
We then distinguish policies at the centralised (i.e. public) level from the private
level. The Government may promote MOOCs by increasing its recognition Garrido et
al. (2016) showed that many non-users respondents in the studies countries were
unaware of MOOCs. The government may endorse MOOCs as a relevant channel of skill
45
development even though they fear a cultural imperialism or a threat of substitution

with the local education alternatives. To address the latter, including public universities
of the country among the partners network will not only ensure a control over the
cultural imperialism but will also improve the education quality in the country and
establish MOOCs as a complementary source of education. These actions may address
other issues as the presence of brain drain or situations of camp follower. Further
policies at the public level may target directly the facilitation to pursue business
ventures, whether by addressing the financial market, or promote opportunity
entrepreneurship within its population. At the Private level, universities, may
implement MOOCs as a complement of education, engage in the creation of local MOOC
providers to adapt knowledge to the local context. At the corporate level, firms might
increase the recognition of MOOCs in the process of employment and even implement
certain specifically chosen MOOC courses to complement the training of the
employees and install a supportive environment that rises corporate entrepreneurship.
Further research
In order to pursue further research in the topic MOOC providers must allow the
access to better and more complete data not only including demographics but also,
intentions of registrants. This may help pursuing studies that deepen our discussion on
entrepreneurial opportunities in developing countries. In our research we did not
include notions of culture or language, further research on the different MOOC
providers including those outside United States may indicate possibilities for local
learners in a different language. Further research on the potential of spillover effects
and more specifically, study the potential for the mixed effects and indirect effects at
both the professional and personal level through social networks. An interesting
research agenda would be to understand up to which extent, knowledge acquired
through MOOCs has a direct usage and hence how may the procurement of certificates
impact the decision to employ or not a MOOC student as a sufficient proof of aptitude, or
a complementary asset.
46
Annexes
Annex A.1.: Variable Description Necessary Conditions
Variable name
Variable description
Data source
Date
Dataset for Necessary Conditions
Fixed broadband
subscriptions (per 100
people)
Fixed broadband subscriptions

refers to fixed subscriptions to highspeed access to the public Internet
(a TCP/IP connection), at
downstream speeds equal to, or
greater than, 256 kbit/s. This
includes cable modem, DSL, fiberto-the-home/building, other fixed
(wired)-broadband subscriptions,
satellite broadband and terrestrial
fixed wireless broadband. It
excludes subscriptions that have
access to data communications
(including the Internet) via mobilecellular networks.
Secure Internet servers

(per 1 million people)
Secure servers are servers using

encryption technology in Internet
transactions.
Internet users (per 100

people)
Internet users are individuals who

have used the Internet (from any
location) in the last 12 months.
Internet can be used via a computer,
mobile phone, personal digital
assistant, games machine, digital
TV etc.
Years of schooling
Average Years of Schooling Attained
Years of schooling
primary
Years of schooling
Tertiary
Average Years of Primary Schooling

Attained
Average Years of Tertiary Schooling
Attained
Percentage of english speakers per
country. The data is gathered from
different sources and takes into
account where the most come from
Eurobarmeter and crystal (2003).
(cf. Website source)
Percentage of english
speakers per country
World Bank indicators

International Telecommunication
Union, World
Telecommunication/ICT
Development Report and database.
2013

Netcraft (http://www.netcraft.com/)
and World Bank population estimates.
2013

International Telecommunication
Union, World Telecommunication/ICT
Development Report and database,
and World Bank estimates.
Barro-Lee Database on education

attainmnent
Data available at:
http://www.barrolee.com/
2013
2010
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S1784947iaA8
Eurobarometer, crystal, Euromonitor
and cencus.
47
Annex A.2.: Variable Description Regression Analysis

Variable name
Variable description
Data source
Date
Complementary Regression Analysis Data

World Bank World Development Indicators
Life expectancy at birth indicates the number of

Life expectancy at birth, years a newborn infant would live if prevailing
total (years)
patterns of mortality at the time of its birth were
to stay the same throughout its life.
Unemployment refers to the share of the labor

Unemployment, total (%
force that is without work but available for and
of total labor force)
seeking employment.
Derived from male and female life expectancy at birth

from sources such as: (1) United Nations Population
Division. World Population Prospects, (2) United Nations
Statistical Division. Population and Vital Statistics Report
(various years), (3) Census reports and other statistical
publications from national statistical offices, (4) Eurostat:
Demographic Statistics, (5) Secretariat of the Pacific
Community: Statistics and Demography Programme,
and (6) U.S. Census Bureau: International Database.
20012

International Labour Organization, Key Indicators of
the Labour Market database.
GDP at market prices

(current US$)
GDP at purchaser's prices is the sum of gross

value added by all resident producers in the
economy plus any product taxes and minus any
subsidies not included in the value of the
products. It is calculated without making
deductions for depreciation of fabricated assets
or for depletion and degradation of natural
resources. Data are in current U.S. dollars. Dollar World Bank national accounts data, and OECD
figures for GDP are converted from domestic
National Accounts data files.
currencies using single year official exchange
rates. For a few countries where the official
exchange rate does not reflect the rate effectively
applied to actual foreign exchange transactions,
an alternative conversion factor is used.
Population, total
Total population is based on the de facto

definition of population, which counts all
residents regardless of legal status or
citizenship--except for refugees not permanently
settled in the country of asylum, who are
generally considered part of the population of
their country of origin. The values shown are
midyear estimates.
2014
2014

(1) United Nations Population Division. World
Population Prospects, (2) United Nations Statistical
Division. Population and V ital Statistics Report
(various years), (3) Census reports and other
2014
statistical publications from national statistical
offices, (4) Eurostat: Demographic Statistics, (5)
Secretariat of the Pacific Community: Statistics and
Demography Programme, and (6) U.S. Census
Bureau: International Database.
Ease of doing business ranks economies from 1 to

189, with first place being the best. A high
ranking (a low numerical rank) means that the
Ease of doing business regulatory environment is conducive to business
World Bank, Doing Business project
index (1=most business- operation. The index averages the country's
(http://www.doingbusiness.org/).
friendly regulations)
percentile rankings on 10 topics covered in the
World Bank's Doing Business. The ranking on
each topic is the simple average of the percentile
rankings on its component indicators.
Registrant in MOOCs
per country
Aggregated number of MOOC registrants in the

edX platfom for all the courses from Harvard. The
data was prepared by using IP addess geolocation
of HarvardX registrants, as well as parsing self
reported mailing address provided at registration
if IP address is unavailable.
2014
HarvardX Insights
Nesterko, S. O., Seaton, D. T., Kashin, K., Han, Q.,
Reich, J., Waldo, J., Chuang I., & Ho, A. D. (2014).
World Map of Enrollment (HarvardX Insights).
http://neste rko.com/visuals/harvardx/documentation/E nrollment_worldmap_data_specification.pdf
Harvard Dataverse
Registrant in MOOCs
per country
Aggregated number of MOOC registrants in the

edX platfom for all the courses from HarvardX
and MITx. De-identified Data made publically
available by Harvard.
Hansen, John; Reich, Justin, 2015, "Socioeconomic

Status Indicators of HarvardX and MITx Participants
2012-2014", http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/29779,
Harvard Dataverse, V4
https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/29779
48

Annex B:Factor Scores per country. Source: Own Computation with Factor
Analysis (Alphabetic order). Data: Annex A.1.
ISO code
Africa
DZ
BJ
BW
BI
CM
CD
CG
CI
EG
GM
GH
KE
LS
LR
MW
ML
MR
MU
MA
MZ
NA
NE
RW
SN
ZA
SZ
TZ
TG
TN
UG
ZM
ZW
Asia
AM
BH
BD
BN
MM
KH
CY
HK
IN
ID
IR
IL
JP
KZ
KR
KW
KG
LA
MO
MY
MV
MN
NP
PK
PH
QA
SA
SG
LK
SY
TJ
TH
TR
VN
YE
country
Access to
Platform
Algeria
Benin
Botswana
Burundi
Cameroon
Congo, Democratic Republic of the
Congo, Republic of the
Cote d'Ivoire
Egypt
Gambia, The
Ghana
Kenya
Lesotho
Liberia
Malawi
Mali
Mauritania
Mauritius
Morocco
Mozambique
Namibia
Niger
Rwanda
Senegal
South Africa
Swaziland
Tanzania
Togo
Tunisia
Uganda
Zambia
Zimbabwe
-0.69
-0.88
-0.84
-0.92
-0.90
-0.92
-0.92
-0.90
-0.68
-0.91
-0.88
-0.93
-0.92
-0.86
-0.93
-0.91
-0.91
-0.01
-0.76
-0.91
-0.82
-0.91
-0.92
-0.87
-0.71
-0.92
-0.93
-0.91
-0.61
-0.91
-0.93
-0.87
Armenia
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Brunei
Burma
Cambodia
Cyprus
Hong Kong
India
Indonesia
Iran
Israel
Japan
Kazakhstan
Korea, South
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Macau
Malaysia
Maldives
Mongolia
Nepal
Pakistan
Philippines
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
Singapore
Sri Lanka
Syria
Tajikistan
Thailand
Turkey
Vietnam
Yemen
-0.34
0.60
-0.83
-0.43
-0.90
-0.91
0.61
1.33
-0.82
-0.84
-0.45
0.96
1.18
-0.06
2.09
-0.82
-0.70
-0.92
0.95
-0.24
-0.53
-0.52
-0.84
-0.82
0.36
-0.25
-0.24
1.14
-0.78
-0.83
-0.87
-0.39
-0.11
-0.55
-0.85
Access to
Knowledge
ISO code
country
Europe
-0.73 AL
Albania
-1.51 AT
Austria
0.08 BE
Belgium
-1.76 BG
Bulgaria
-0.81 HR
Croatia
-1.46 CZ
Czech Republic
-0.82 DK
Denmark
-1.26 EE
Estonia
-0.55 FI
Finland
-1.66 FR
France
-0.48 DE
Germany
-0.74 GR
Greece
-0.95 HU
Hungary
-1.36 IS
Iceland
-1.31 IE
Ireland
-2.06 IT
Italy
-1.43 LV
Latvia
-0.02 LT
Lithuania
-1.25 LU
Luxembourg
-2.16 MT
Malta
-0.74 NL
Netherlands
-2.09 NO
Norway
-1.55 PL
Poland
-1.81 PT
Portugal
0.26 RO
Romania
-1.37 RU
Russia
-1.12 SK
Slovakia
-1.23 SI
Slovenia
-0.54 ES
Spain
-0.96 SE
Sweden
-0.66 CH
Switzerland
-0.43 UA
Ukraine
GB
United Kingdom
0.87 Norh America
-0.42 BB
Barbados
-1.04 BZ
Belize
0.09 CA
Canada
-1.30 CR
Costa Rica
-1.35 CU
Cuba
0.89 DO
Dominican Republic
0.94 SV
El Salvador
-0.87 GT
Guatemala
-0.38 JM
Jamaica
0.01 MX
Mexico
1.42 NI
Nicaragua
1.11 PA
Panama
1.15 TT
Trinidad and Tobago
1.33 US
United States
-0.59 Oceania
1.03 AU
Australia
-1.18 FJ
Fiji
0.00 NZ
New Zealand
0.45 TO
Tonga
-1.22 South America
0.48 AR
Argentina
-1.52 BO
Bolivia
-1.19 BR
Brazil
-0.10 CL
Chile
0.03 CO
Colombia
-0.16 EC
Ecuador
0.80 GY
Guyana
0.39 PY
Paraguay
-0.69 PE
Peru
0.96 UY
Uruguay
-0.38 VE
Venezuela
-0.56
-0.26
-1.75
Access to
Platform
Access to
Knowledge
-0.58
1.13
1.61
0.47
0.64
0.97
2.30
1.18
1.58
1.85
1.70
0.92
0.88
2.08
1.03
0.70
0.80
1.05
1.81
1.68
2.36
2.05
0.38
0.75
0.27
0.25
0.47
0.93
0.92
1.65
2.47
-0.28
1.86
0.38
0.65
0.85
1.01
0.93
1.40
1.15
1.40
0.69
0.88
1.57
0.62
1.12
0.90
1.20
0.46
0.73
0.94
1.05
0.67
1.15
1.16
0.88
-0.35
0.70
1.17
1.34
1.19
0.68
1.21
1.78
1.03
1.34
0.78
-0.68
1.69
-0.24
-0.92
-0.59
-0.64
-0.78
-0.52
-0.21
-0.77
-0.36
0.18
1.46
0.24
0.81
1.43
-0.18
0.42
-0.25
-0.32
-1.27
0.34
0.02
-0.72
0.27
0.50
1.71
1.13
-0.85
1.32
-0.80
1.12
0.26
0.91
0.71
0.07
-0.84
-0.21
-0.03
-0.27
-0.48
-0.58
-0.78
-0.56
0.53
-0.44
0.28
-0.22
-0.24
0.45
0.06
-0.30
-0.04
-0.39
0.11
-0.08
-0.07
49
Annex C :Course description. Data: HarvardX Insights (cf. Annex A.2.)
50
Annex D: Heteroskedasticity-corrected linear regression

All subjects
Non-OECD
All
OECD
Non-OECD
(E)
(SS)
(NS)
1.099e-05**
1.438e-05**
1.224e-05**
1.458e-05**
1.611e-05**
1.376e-05**
(5.03E-007)
(4.36E-006)
(8.07E-007)
(1.60E-006)
(1.36E-006)
(1.36E-006)
7.911e-07**
2.905e-06*
7.622e-07**
8.689e-07**
1.340e-06**
7.181e-07**
(2.25E-007)
(1.76E-006)
(2.24E-007)
(3.41E-007)
(5.07E-007)
(3.30E-007)
3.246e-06**
(3.33E-006)
4.838e-06**
7.793e-06**
4.795e-06**
7.316e-06**
(7.48E-007)
(2.37E-006)
(1.08E-006)
(2.14E-006)
(1.92E-006)
(1.75E-006)
Dependent Variable
Participants (per capita)
Independent variables
Education
Access to MOOC platform
Control variables
Life expectancy
Unemployment
Easiness of doing Business
GDP (per capita)
2.67E-007
4.75E-006
(1.26E-007)
1.24E-007
(2.31E-007)
1.36E-007
(1.78E-007)
(4.04E-006)
(1.79E-007)
(2.91E-007)
(3.98E-007)
(2.92E-007)
5.097e-07**
5.709e-06**
3.848e-07**
4.04E-007
7.827e-07**
6.145e-07**
(1.74E-007)
(1.32E-006)
(1.73E-007)
(2.54E-007)
(3.96E-007)
(2.93E-007)
-1.778e-08**
-2.080e-07**
-2.208e-08**
-1.859e-08**
-3.620e-08**
-1.577e-08**
(5.53E-009)
(3.65E-009)
(7.93E-008)
(3.66E-009)
(6.07E-009)
(7.62E-009)
3.232e-06**
5.811e-06**
2.861e-06**
2.636e-06**
3.119e-06**
2.58E-006
(7.58E-007)
(1.73E-006)
(8.34E-007)
(1.16E-006)
(8.24E-007)
(1.59E-006)
1230
340
890
356
356
356
R2
0.2754
0.2665
0.2101
0.2481
0.2993
0.2407
Adj. R2
0.2718
0.2533
0.2047
0.2352
0.2873
0.2277
Dependant variable: number of participants divided by the population of the country. The dependent variable in per-capita
terms implies near-zero results and standard errors. The table presents only signs and significance levels for clutter purpose.
The table with the exact estimates and p-values is accessible in the annex. Independent and control variables were
standardised except the rank of easiness of doing business.
*,**,*** denote significance at the 10, 5 and 1 percent levels, respectively.
51
Annex E: Country readiness to benefit from MOOCs. Source: Own computation based on Factor analysis.
Data: cf. Annex A.1.
52
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MOOCs : From Readiness to Opportunities

Raphael Mateus Martins

May 31, 2016

MOOCs : From Readiness to Opportunities Developing Countries Perspective

What are the necessary conditions developing countries must ameliorate to

Which opportunities do MOOCs create for its participants in developing

Semester Project May 2016: Aalborg University

MOOCs : From Readiness to Opportunities Developing Countries Perspective

Overview of the Project

Semester Project May 2016: Aalborg University

MOOCs : From Readiness to Opportunities Developing Countries Perspective

The overall productivity of capital is influenced by the level of education of the

Semester Project May 2016: Aalborg University

competencies industry-based. This is provided by initial training.

strengths or weaknesses in their own skills development systems (ibid., p.4).

MOOCs : From Readiness to Opportunities Developing Countries Perspective

Twenty-first century needs educated leaders with flexibility, confidence,

The sate of education in the developing countries

Semester Project May 2016: Aalborg University

MOOCs : From Readiness to Opportunities Developing Countries Perspective

Semester Project May 2016: Aalborg University

World Bank (2000).

MOOCs : From Readiness to Opportunities Developing Countries Perspective

Rosovsky (2015) characterise them as "Low-quality institutions mushroom". The vertical

Semester Project May 2016: Aalborg University

Recent trend in education

MOOCs : From Readiness to Opportunities Developing Countries Perspective

Information available at: www.internetworldstats.com/stats1.htm

Semester Project May 2016: Aalborg University

MOOCs : From Readiness to Opportunities Developing Countries Perspective

Open learning is described as a number of facets of openness, of which the

freedom to study at a time chosen by the student within a specified

high degree of openness over the choice of courses to make up a degree

MOOCs as platforms for learning

Semester Project May 2016: Aalborg University

2. Content-based MOOCs (xMOOCs): are essentially an expansion of the

MOOCs : From Readiness to Opportunities Developing Countries Perspective

Semester Project May 2016: Aalborg University

MOOCs : From Readiness to Opportunities Developing Countries Perspective

Obstacles in the developing World

Semester Project May 2016: Aalborg University

MOOCs : From Readiness to Opportunities Developing Countries Perspective

Semester Project May 2016: Aalborg University

Years of schooling primary

Years of schooling tertiary

Access to MOOC platform (infrastructure + language)

Internet users (per 100 people)

Secure Internet servers (per 1

Percentage of english speakers

3 Years of schooling tertiary

4 Fixed broadband subscriptions (per 100 people)

5 Internet users (per 100 people)

6 Secure Internet servers (per 1 million people)

7 Percentage of english speakers per country

MOOCs : From Readiness to Opportunities Developing Countries Perspective

Years of schooling primary

Years of schooling tertiary