Labor Relations Commons^™

Impacts Of Moocs On Intellectual Property Rights And Collective Bargaining, Nicholas Anastasopoulos

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

Massive Open Online Courses (“MOOCs”) are free, online courses offered by institutions of higher education to individual users across the world, and in the vast majority of cases, without any admissions criteria. MOOCs are popular with individuals because they offer unprecedented, free access to the best institutions in the world that were previously inaccessible to the vast majority of the population–all a user needs is a computer and Internet access. College and university administrators are excited about MOOCs because of the marketing reach and additional revenues available through this medium. Professors are excited to have their lectures seen by as …

Moocs: When Opening Doors To Education, Institutions Must Ensure That People With Disabilities Have Equal Access, Nicholas Anastasopoulos, Amanda Marie Baer

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

Massive Open Online Courses (“MOOCs”) are free online courses offered by institutions of higher education to individuals across the world, without any admissions criteria. Through web-based courses hosted by MOOC platforms, such as Coursera or edX, student-participants learn by accessing media, including documents, pictures and uploaded lectures on the course website.

While MOOCs may make access to education easier for individuals with certain disabilities, their format may render the courses inaccessible to individuals who have vision or hearing impairment. Many individuals with vision impairment use “assistive technology,” such as screen readers and voice recognition software, to use computers and access …