NIU administrators are constantly brainstorming ways to increase student enrollment. My suggestion: offer more MOOCs.

MOOCs — or massive open online courses — are free online courses designed to disseminate instruction to anyone with an Internet connection. While many of us have taken a few courses on the Internet, the MOOC is a big player in online education many are unaware of.

The best way to understand why I think MOOCs could increase enrollment is to break down the acronym.

Massive: Some MOOCs hosted on edX, a website for the online classes, have had more than hundreds of thousands of participants. Talk about marketing potential.

Open: MOOCs can be taken anywhere by anyone. There are no restrictions on registering for the majority MOOCs. Courses are available any time, with material being available even after a course ends.

Online: All you need is an Internet connection to enroll in a MOOC, including NIU’s first MOOC, Perspectives on Disability.

Course: Most of these classes have quizzes and assignments, just like any standard course you take.

Ivy Leagues and community colleges alike offer MOOCs. Topics vary from modern American poetry to biomedical imaging and everything in between. Broad subjects would help NIU reach a diverse audience.

“So many things in our society — entertainment, shopping, etc. — have moved to an online platform,” said English instructor Loren Hecht. “It should come as no surprise that education is following that trend.”

NIU offered its first MOOC just last semester. Greg Long, professor of health and human sciences, led the development of the class Perspectives on Disability.

“The goal of the MOOC in its purest form is to share information broadly,” Long said.

Nearly 500 people in 48 countries registered for NIU’s first MOOC. That’s right. NIU’s only one thus far was able to reach a half-thousand people in 48 countries. Just imagine the number of people we could reach with 10 of them.

NIU’s first MOOC was also successful on another front. Of all the enrollees, 17 percent completed the course — almost doubling the average completion rate of 10 percent, Long said.

So with these early successes, why hasn’t NIU offered more MOOCs?

“This is probably not a replicable mode,” Long stated. “It took a lot of work. It was the university’s first MOOC and represented a big collaboration between me and the Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center. [To continue offering them,] MOOCs would have to have some cost return to it.”

Long said his course cost roughly $8,000 and took the instructors more than 800 hours to teach, most of which were volunteered.

But substantial amount of research is being put into curbing financial losses. Ideas range from charging participants for a certificate of completion to using MOOCs as a match-making tool between students and companies, with schools and providers collecting a finder’s fee.

But NIU should not look only at cash flow. The administration should realize MOOCs offer an unparalleled opportunity to reach broad audiences. NIU needs to consider more of these classes.