Massive Open Online Courses: an opportunity or a threat for Ibero-american universities?

Abstract

In recent months, the emergence of massive open online courses is one of the most important phenomena that higher education has experienced in recent decades. However, the language in which these contents are created will determine whether necessary critical mass is reached in order to achieve sustainability for this new distance education model. Latin American universities are facing a great opportunity to meet the demand for knowledge of the hundreds of millions of Spanish and Portuguese speakers who do not speak English and, therefore, cannot follow undertake Anglo-Saxon university courses. In response to this new 
challenge MyriadX, a platform for Massive Open Online Courses was launched in early 2013 for the Latin American audience.