Companies like Udacity (founded February 2012),  Coursera (founded April 2012)  and  Harvard-MIT collaboration edX (founded April 2012) are organizing the courses in such a way that anyone can have access to a slice of higher education. Now institutions such as Stanford University (Coursera and Udacity were both formed in part by Stanford professors) as well as many others, such as Georgia Institute of Technology,  University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Irvine, University of Florida, University of Pennsylvania, University of Washington, Georgetown University,  Rice University, and Indiana University, are creating courses to supplement their on-site school curriculum.

Another plus that's coming out of the MOOC trend is the increasing development of social networks among students. In a Nov 2, 2012 article in its Education Life section, the New York Times stated that "meet-ups" are being organized in over 1,400 cities globally, in places like Beijing, Singapore, Barcelona and Coimbatore, India. And social interactions among students have been proven to be a very important learning and academic success component.

Click here for a brief infographic history of the MOOC.