A BUSINESS MODEL FOR MOOCS AS PART OF A UNIVERSITY COLLEGE PROGRAM

During the last twenty years the Faculty of Informatics and e-learning at Sor-Trondelag University College (HiST) has offered online courses as part of a continuing education programme. The programme has adult learners as its main target group and has been run as a sustainable offer, based on student fees. In the academic year 2014 - 2015 the faculty developed and offered one national MOOC for ICT in teacher training and took part in one international MOOC in Entrepreneurship and Innovation (FLITE - Flexible Learning in ICT and Entrepreneurship). The teacher training MOOC is fully flexible and now has about 1150 Norwegian enrolments, while the FLITE MOOC, scheduled from 18th of May to 13th of July, had 1550 enrolments worldwide. Both courses were offered for free with the costs covered by allocation of project money. In this paper I look at the characteristics of the two MOOCs compared with the continuing education programme. I also look at some of the recent papers on business modelling for MOOCs and evaluate their proposals and the extent to which they are applicable for developing a business model for including MOOCs as part of the Sor-Trondelag University College programme for continuing education. The new model is based on twenty years experience and data collection for traditional online course delivery and modern large-scale course offers. Finally I discuss some presumptions and assumptions for implementing the model under different external conditions.