Abstract:

An educational innovation since about a decade ago, are the Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC) whose current bid stands at over 4,000 courses offered through the Internet, with free access emerged in uncertificated form. Against this background it is prudent to examine whether MOOC may be a feasible alternative to offer continuing education and whether they are economically viable compared to conventional courses offered by universities in Mexico. This paper starts from a strong argument to consider the broad coverage is achieved by means of the Internet and the possibility that most of the population using a technological device could receive the signal, with an estimated reduction of operating costs by the amount of potentially benefit people. For this reason, the present study provides information on the profitability of this service and the cost-benefit accounting per student, with the main objective to describe the operational feasibility of the MOOC efficiency compared to conventional continuous education offered by universities in the state of Sonora, Mexico. To this end, a literature review in virtual sources and databases was conducted in the topic of conventionally courses offered locally and MOOC courses provided by Mexican universities. It is concluded that the costs are high for developing MOOC courses and it is required commitment, time and attention of a team of experts in the field of education and new technologies; although there is the possibility that in the medium term benefit coverage is increased by reducing the cost per student. The records at MOOC participation by people in Mexico remains low and resources are underutilized compared to the interest held by other students in developed countries.

Keywords:

MOOC, higher education, knowledge, democratization.