Abstract:

The paper deals with e-learning, which nowadays, in the era affected by the covid-19 pandemic, is at its highest importance. E-learning uses the Internet, multimedia technologies, and other media to improve educational quality. Information is exchanged via the Internet, thus enhancing the availability of educational materials.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been developing most dynamically in this sector in recent years, with open online courses designed for an unlimited number of participants and generally provided free of charge.

Several platforms are used for the course and administration of MOOCs, each of which has different specifics. This paper aims to perform a comparative analysis of available platforms for the implementation of MOOCs. Based on identifying available platforms, we found that different platforms are used depending on the geographical location. The most developed MOOCs market is in North America, followed by Europe, Asia, Australia and, last but not least, Latin America. Most US universities ranked in the top 10 in the ranking of the best universities providing massive online courses, but the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands took first place.

The subsequent comparative analysis was based on comparing the following criteria: access, content, video length, course communication, ratings, content creators, maximum course size, certificates, mobile use. The Moodle platform received the highest rating, followed by Courser, Learn2Code, FutureLearn, EdX and Udemy.

Keywords:

Education, e-learning, MOOC, platform, comparative analysis.