MOOCs in Logistics – Preliminary Data on University Curricula Coverage

After a decade of MOOC and open education development there is an abundance of available online content. The aim of this study is to find out whether the MOOC landscape in logistics has grown to a point of topically covering entire university curricula worth of topics. Provided the affirmative outcome, this would mean greater competition but also greater opportunities for universities teaching logistics programs to apply blended learning. We present an overview of logistics-related material on three major platforms totaling 95 courses and compare a sample of five logistics curricula against this list to demonstrate the extent of coverage by online material as well as to point out the gaps. The data suggests that the current status of logistics MOOCs can mostly cover more introductory and broader managerial-type programs but not material on logistics operations in-depth. Also, MOOCs tend to struggle with more interdisciplinary topic approaches. The findings allow to discuss on the nature of identified gaps as well as to encourage and foresee continuous growth of blended learning.