Widening Horizons. Why Russian Universities Place MOOCs on Open Learning Platforms

Abstract

The main objective of this article is to find out the Russian universities’ motives for developing and placing exponential massive open online courses (xMOOCs) on open educational platforms. The study shows that in such decisions the universities are motivated not only by the direct profit from their courses implementation, but also by other reasons, which can be divided into two groups: 1) encouraging the use of university development opportunities and 2) aiming to overcome deficiencies and shortages in university’s activities. The majority of motives, such as “online programs promotion for additional and further professional education”, “the university’s overall brand promotion”, and “online higher education programs promotion”, are focused on development opportunities, only one (“teachers’ qualifications improvement”) aimed at overcoming deficiencies.