International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT) – Volume 49 Issue 2 July 2017 ISSN: 2231-2803 http://www.ijcttjournal.org Page 111 An Overview of MOOC in India Jyoti Chauhan 1 1 Research Scholar, Department of Computer Science, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India jyotich2009@gmail.com Abstract— In recent years, the enrolment in Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) has increased tremendously. India after US is dominating the global growth in enrolments. Seeing the growth of enrolment from the country and satisfy their need of education, India has started various projects for offering MOOC courses. Currently, NPTEL, mooKIT, IITBX, and SWAYAM are the platforms used in India for offering courses. In this paper, a theoretical and technical background of these platforms is provided with a discussion of their features. Further, a comparative analysis of the platforms is provided, using web analysis. There are some challenges that are faced in implementing MOOC in India. With the launch of SWAYAM, some of these issues are already addressed. Keywords— MOOC, MOOC in India, NPTEL, MooKIT, SWAYAM, Indian MOOC platforms. I. INTRODUCTION Online learning uses technology for delivering the courses. Education with technology is considered as most promising development in education. With technology globalization, the concept of learning and teaching has undergone a tremendous change. Technological usage in education provides global learning environment, which allows accessing the course material anytime, anywhere, connect other learners, and get access to the content without considering any geographical boundaries. The significant changes in use of the technology in online education has seen emergence of the concept of Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). Nowadays, MOOC is the most popular way used to offer online courses, globally. MOOC are the massive course designed to support unlimited (logically) participation and are offered through a platform. It has gained lot of popularity since the time of its development in 2008. As of December 2016, approximately 58 million students are registered for the MOOC courses, offered by more than 700 universities and approximately 6850 courses [1], offered by various providers such as, Coursera, edX, Udacity. India after US, is dominating the global growth in enrollment, accounting for 8,83,400 (27 %) users on edX, 1.5 million [1] on Coursera, and 112,000 (13%) on Udacity [2], from India as in 2016. The massive enrollment is ensuring that the vast majority of the growth in enrollment of learners is occurring from India, and will surely increase in coming years. In India, the institutes with the organizational capabilities along with the governing authorities are trying to serve the grown educational need of the learners, by offering MOOCs in the country. May be the efforts are in the process to grow yet and serve at the rate of growth in demand. Top institutes (IITs, IIMs, IISC) and authorities (UGC, AICTE, MHRD) have always been involved in the initiative of serving quality education learners in India including traditional as well as the online education. Some of projects serving currently for providing online education are NPTEL, mooKIT offered by IIT Kanpur, and IITBX of IIT Bombay. The most recent initiative started by the government is “SWAYAM”, started with a goal to serve at a very large scale and to cope with the increased needs of the learner’s. In this paper, the focus is to explore and compare the MOOC platform used for offering courses in India. These platforms are also compared using the web analysis, where data is collected based on the traffic of the site, offering the MOOC. Here, introduction of the Indian MOOC platform is presented by unveiling their potential, technology used, and features supported. The author has formulated a list of features provided by each of these platforms. Furthermore, based on the data collected from the web, using a tool, the MOOC platforms are compared. Here, various measures are covered for three categories -1) Website, 2) Website Audience, and 3) Traffic Sources. Each category further has sub categories providing different level of details, for each platform. Also, author has mentioned some of the challenges to offer MOOC in India and confined the solutions for these issues through the SWAYAM platform. In this paper, Section II provides a discussion on potential of MOOC in India. Section III provides an overview of the MOOC in India with different platforms. Section IV explains what technology is used by these platforms. Section V explains their different features. Section VI provides a comparative study of the platforms, using web analysis. Section VII discusses the challenges for MOOC in India followed by the solutions offered by SWAYAM in section VIII. Section IX states the conclusion. II. POTENTIAL OF MOOC IN INDIA MOOC has a huge potential veiled in India. Recent years have seen tremendous hike in the enrolment by Indian students in MOOCs all over world. India is among the leading countries in terms of enrolments in courses offered by many popular MOOC providers including edX, Coursera, and Udacity.