- MOOC enrolment surpassed 35 million in 2015
- There are now about 4,200 MOOCs including courses offered by more than 500 universities
- The major MOOC providers are increasingly focused on fee-based credentials, including those leading to academic credit or full degrees
- Providers are also increasingly targeting high school and international students in their course offerings
More students signed up for MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) in 2015 than in the previous three years combined. The field of online courses became somewhat more international in its orientation during the year, and the established providers sharpened their focus on revenue generation.
All of these trends point to a 2015 that marked an interesting turning point in the short history of MOOCs: a dramatic expansion in enrolment coupled with a stronger business footing for leading providers.
These are some of the insights found in the latest reports on MOOC trends from Class Central, a website that aggregates MOOC course listings from providers around the world.
In a summary of high-level statistics for 2015, the number of students who have signed up for at least one course surpassed 35 million in 2015, up from an estimated 16-18 million in 2014.
Coursera was the leading provider again in 2015, accounting for nearly half of all MOOC students with an estimated user base of 17 million (seven million of which were added in the last year alone). UK-based FutureLearn, however, was the big surprise of the year. The British platform grew by 275% in 2015 and, with an estimated user base of three million, is now the third-ranked provider (by enrolment) after Coursera and edX.
This hierarchy is also visible when considering provider market share in terms of courses offered. As the following chart reflects, Coursera is again the clear leader and offered more than a third of all available MOOCs as of 2015. edX is the second-ranked provider with just over 18% of all courses. There is, however, a notable drop-off in terms of course distribution after those two market leaders: the Canvas network comes in third with 6.92% of courses, followed closely by FutureLearn at 5.68%. For French speaking courses, FUN, OpenClassroom and for spanish courses, MiriadaX are offering alternatives. NovoEd offers a useful alternative and some great courses in collaboration with IDEO.org
When the why is clear the how is easy 
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