For the Software Engineering for SaaS course offered by UC Berkeley under Coursera (see https://www.coursera.org/course/saas), which is the course I blogged about, my understanding is that the online course is based on the first 5 weeks of a longer face to face (traditional) course being offered to Computer Science undergrads at Berkeley.

I think the face to face course was delivered a few weeks in advance of the first Coursera MOOC delivery and that video/audio material offered as part of the MOOC was recorded during those face to face lectures.

The software used to auto-grade MOOC submissions was in development anyway to auto-grade submissions from face to face students in order to streamline delivery of the face to face course but delivery of the MOOC gave added incentive to get it working more quickly/reliably.

The course leaders wrote a book (which is primarily being made available as a e-book) to support the course, costing around $10(US). My initial assumption was that this might be a way for the lecturers to make some money out of delivering the course but, speaking to a colleague of the course leader, I think this is not the case - the book was actually made available on a not-for-profit basis. See http://beta.saasbook.info/.

Clearly, being software-related, this MOOC is a special case.

Some material about how/why the course was developed is available at:

http://www.armandofox.com/geek/2012/05/about-uc-berkeley-cs169-software-engineering/

http://www.armandofox.com/geek/2012/04/crossing-the-software-education-chasm/

and

http://www.armandofox.com/geek/2012/03/made-it-to-spring-break-things-still-holding-together/

http://www.armandofox.com/geek/2012/03/the-downside-of-online-education/

http://www.armandofox.com/geek/2012/03/week-3-no-disasters-yet/

(Note that the first two links here cover both the face to face course and the MOOC and that the other 3 are in reverse chronological order).

I appreciate that none of this really answers your questions about long term sustainability and business models.

On CC BY-NC I've never really understood what the 'commercial' in non-commercial means in the context of higher education. As a paying punter, university courses in the UK certainly feel pretty 'commercial' currently, irrespective of how they are being delivered  - but maybe that's for another discussion ;-) (Sorry, just seen Andy's reply on this which makes sense).

Andy

--
Andy Powell
Research Programme Director
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-----Original Message-----
From: Open Educational Resources [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Fred Riley
Sent: 03 August 2012 15:24
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Coursera

On 3 August 2012 09:57, Andy Powell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Blog post summarising my personal experiences of undertaking one of 
> the Coursera MOOCs: 
> http://efoundations.typepad.com/efoundations/2012/03/moocing-about-wit
> h-saas.html

Thanks, Andy, that makes for interesting reading, as does this thread, not least because it introduced me to yet another unlovely acronym
(MOOC) ;-)

Whilst I welcome this and other MOOCs, it's really not clear to me how Coursera works. The About page (https://www.coursera.org/about) is pretty vague, and doesn't say where the content comes from, who produces it, who runs courses and why, where the money comes from, and so on. According to the BBC news story with which I started the July thread on this (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-18857999):

"Coursera, backed by venture capital, wants to follow the Google and Facebook funding model - offering a service free to users, with the aim of developing revenue streams from large numbers of visitors.

In this latest announcement, it says it now has $22m funding."

Fair enough, except how will the "revenue streams" be developed?
Advertising? Associated services? Charging for courses? Certification?
And if OER is being used, is there not a problem with the usual Creative Commons Non-Commercial licence? When with the Uni of Nottingham I put CC NC stuff out there (sonet.nottingham.ac.uk/rlos/) and I and those I worked with would be unhappy if the content were used for revenue-generating purposes. There are also the good questions that Amber has raised about who it's for and who's going to join in.

I don't have any answers to these and other Qs, so would be interesting to read others' thoughts on them and/or be pointed to articles. I'll be giving the "E-learning and Digital Cultures" course in January a go to suck it and see.

Cheers

Fred

PS: For those of an Albaphile persuasion, MOOC sounds like the Gaelic word "muc", or pig (search on http://www.faclair.com/), which could offer the Coursera lot an interesting alternative logo :o)