Another key to the sustainable development of MOOCs lies in its business model. Over the last few years, Coursera, edX, and FutureLearn have continually adjusted their pricing strategies, expanded their products and business lines, and developing value-added services to achieve commercial profit. However, they still struggle with the issue of how to encourage users pay and maintain such courses and users on such a large scale. Udacity, one of the earliest MOOCs, sought sustainability in 2019 by raising service prices and cutting operation costs. Its specific measures were as follows: 1) It cut the number of employees from 500 to 300; 2) It closed several international offices, including Brazil; 3) It pulled the Udacity app; 4) It focused on its core business, accelerated the development on nano degrees, and also closed some nano degrees; 5) It changed the payment model for nano degrees.

In May 2019, nano degrees were paid by month with a monthly fee standard of USD 399, which doubled the price of early nano degrees. In October 2019, a simple adjustment was made to the payment model. At present, there are options for both pre-payment for the entire project in lump sum and payment by month. Pre-payment in lump sum enjoys a partial discount based on the price of USD 399 per month multiplied by the project duration, but the total price is still much higher than the previous nano degree price (Mendez, 2019). Both Coursera and FutureLearn also adjusted their payment models, both choosing an annual subscription model. Users get access to courses for the entire year (excluding microcredentials and degree programmes) once they have made a lump-sum payment. FutureLearn’s yearly subscription is called FutureLearn Unlimited with a fixed price of USD 249; Coursera’s yearly subscription is called Coursera Plus with a fixed price of USD 399-499. However, how many people are ready to pay for MOOCs? Will payment programmes lead to the withdrawal of a large number of learners from the platforms? All major platforms seem to be seeking a balance between free open learning and commercial profit. If this problem cannot be solved, it will be a challenge for platforms like Coursera and Udacity to maintain sustainable development.

Overall, the major platforms have been constantly exploring business models and optimising their course learning experiences. Some excellent results have been achieved in areas such as Coursera for Business over the last few years. The completion rates for some MOOC programmes such as paid microcredentials have also greatly improved. However, MOOCs still face practical problems and challenges in terms of sustainable operation. In order to address these problems and challenges, it is also necessary for platforms, universities, and the public to seriously consider the ultimate values of MOOCs, their core advantages, and what problems can be solved using MOOCs.

V. Discussions and Conclusions

Overall, 2019 was a relatively stable year in terms of MOOC development. All major MOOC platforms have made steady progress in course services and platform design. The attribute of MOOCs in serving lifelong learning has been further strengthened, and blended teaching based on MOOC resources has been put into practice in university classes by way of finalised products. At the same time, the sustainability of MOOCs is still attracting attention from major platforms and other stakeholders.

The construction of MOOCs in China has demonstrated a high degree of integration with higher education since the beginning and has been promoted and supported by policies at the national level. This has enabled MOOCs in China to establish “China speed,” “China scale,” and “China branding,” which has played an innovative and demonstrative role in global MOOC development. Compared with Coursera, edx, FutureLearn, and other major international platforms, the next stage of MOOC construction in China can focus on exploration in the following aspects. The first is to intensify the modular integration of courses, and to strengthen input of microcredentials and online degrees. Over the last few years, domestic platforms and universities have focused on the development of single independent courses, and have paid less attention to microcredentials and online degrees than Coursera and other international platform. In order to further improve the systematic and in-depth nature of MOOC learning and enrich the choices available to different learners, microcredentials and online degrees should become a new focus of domestic MOOC platforms in resource and product development. The second is to explore an enterprise training model based on MOOC resources. In addition to individual users, MOOC resources can also be widely used for staff training in enterprises and organisations. Coursera and other international platforms have developed corresponding B2B businesses and have made outstanding achievements. This is what MOOC platforms in China can learn from in terms of acquiring more market shares and seeking new profit areas. The third is to accelerate blended teaching reform based on MOOC resources, to give college teachers proper guidance in “using MOOCs” rather than “building MOOCs,” to avoid resource wastage in redundant course building, and to improve the utilisation rate of high quality MOOC resources. It is also necessary for MOOC platforms to offers support for resources, technology, tools, and even methodologies and to promote the practice and innovation of MOOCs in classes. The fourth is to plan an MOOC-based lifelong learning system, to give full play of MOOCs’ open and resource advantages, to coordinate all major platforms with the credit bank, to achieve the credit acquirement, certification, and transfer of MOOC learning under the prerequisite of quality assurance, to build a bridge between MOOC learning and vocational certification, qualification framework, and even formal degree education, and to promote the construction of a system serving lifelong learning for all and the construction of a learning society.

The 2019 China MOOC Conference was convened to summarise the experiences and achievements of MOOC construction in China. At the same time, it also proposes standards and a vision for the future construction of MOOCs. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused people to reexamine the value of online education and MOOCs. Against the call for “suspending classes but not teaching or learning,” almost all universities and primary and middle schools nationwide began to use an online model for normal teaching, and teaching based on MOOCs platforms and resources became the main choice for a large number of university teachers. This is the largest and most unprecedented social experiment in online teaching, and many teachers have come into contact with and practiced online teaching models that are completely different from face-to-face tutorials. They have experienced rapid changes in their teaching ability, confidence, and interest in technology. A large amount of learning data has been accumulated through long-term online teaching and caused a series of education and teaching problems worth of studying. In the future, MOOCs will enter a peak period built on the process of developed from technological maturity to steady rise.