It is one of the most amazing things that could happen to a confused and undecided college graduate wondering which subjects to apply for or even to a person just eager to learn new things. Massive Open Online Courses, or Mooc, is a God sent!

The word ‘Mooc’ was first coined by Canadian academics in 2008 but it has been made more popular courtesy of the many platforms using the basic idea of massive online courses, free of charge, such as Udacity, Coursera, etc.

Mooc is the modern form of your distant learning courses. But it is completely internet-based. The new wave of technology and internet has made education, in some form or the other, available to all who wish to avail the opportunity. The best thing about this is that instead of learning in isolation or just having a one-way communication of knowledge via the traditional modes — correspondence, radio, television — Mooc allows for a two-way mode of learning. The discussion groups, Google hangouts, meet ups all allow for a greater level of interaction between the teaching staff and the class. This mode also allows for greater debates, interactions, instant replies to your questions allowing access to global point of views, bringing something unique to the class from another part of the world.

But why should you consider taking Mooc? Well, let me list a few reasons. Variety is the spice of Mooc — the choice of subjects to choose from for your university degree is never an easy decision. It is a decision that is going to have an effect on your life, a decision that you would be living with every single day of your life. Therefore it is important that you know for sure that the subject you take is the one for you, something that you enjoy and want to commit to. That’s where Mooc really shines. In a real time scenario, you hardly have the luxury to try a course just out of curiosity or to see if it strikes a chord with you. But you can do just that with Mooc. You can try subjects such as philosophy, business, accounting, statistics, economics, education, religion and even arts, creativity, innovation, performing arts and creative writing.

With such a wide variety of subjects to choose from there is no doubt that you will be able to make a sound decision regarding where your strengths and interests lie.

The courses offered are all free and this allows you to take a whole bunch of subjects without any financial worries. You can enroll in 20, 30 or even more if you have the time.

Another great thing about Mooc is that you can drop a subject right in the middle of a course. If you suddenly realise that a subject doesn’t interest you, simply dump it. Try something else. Mooc is like an experiment ground where you can do this without feeling guilty. It allows you to sift through your interests in a much faster way. And you don’t have to waste an entire semester in a university to figure out if a particular course is right for you, not to mention the money you’ll be spending doing that.

Now where can you find a course on ‘Moralities of everyday life’ or ‘Comic books and graphic novels’? While these may seem irrelevant to some, you never know when you can apply the lessons learnt from a course like ‘Think again: how to reason and argue’. Hey you business majors, this is one course you want to enroll in!

Be the Jack of all trades. If nothing else, you can at least get an introductory-level understanding of a subject. For instance, if you are a business major dealing with an art company, a little understanding on the art front would be a great help. Or maybe you are an art major starting your own company. Well, how about a course on ‘Developing innovative ideas for new companies: the first step in entrepreneurship’?

Do homework and coursework at your own convenience. A course usually requires somewhere around six hours a week of dedicated work. Not here. Here you don’t just have video lectures and readings but also quizzes, assignments, and the peer assessments (everyone checks their peer’s assignment and also gives grades). And they keep your convenience the centre of everything. A course is usually divided into weeks, giving you time to complete your assignments and reading whenever you find fit.

You get a certificate, and sometimes a bit more, too. A lot of these courses offer you a certificate at the end, which is signed by the instructor with a mention of the institute offering that particular course. Still, you do need to show your commitment. A lot of courses now even offer a signature track or a verified certificate from the institute offering the course. However, that requires a small fee, usually starting from $40.

Sometimes, you can also find a great perk for completing the course. A social psychology course being offered by Wesleyan University on coursera.org is offering one student who completes the coursework and quizzes a full paid trip to Stanford to meet the Dalai Lama; another course’s professors have offered to donate their hair to a charity, Locks of Love, if a quarter of the students enrolled complete the course.

Stanford University, The Museum of Modern Art, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Berklee College of Music, Princeton University, Johns Hopkins University, The University of Edinburgh, Yale University are only the tip of the iceberg. There are more than 60 universities, and growing, that are now offering Mooc in collaboration with various platforms. A certificate with a big university name is definitely a resume booster.

The New York Times had termed 2012 as the year of the Mooc, still, that is not to say that Mooc doesn’t get its fair share of criticism. The most obvious criticism for Mooc is it does not provide the same type of attention to students as one can get in a real classroom. Then there is also the argument of how much of a course can you really fit into seven weeks. The grading system, too, raises questions. How can you trust your peers to be genuinely fair in their grading?

While these are all reasonable arguments, Mooc is something of an appetiser, a litmus paper test if you will. It never claims to be a replacement or a substitute to a university degree, Mooc supposes to serve as an introduction to the main course so that you can develop a taste (or not) for that particular topic. If you think of Mooc in this way there is little fault to be found with it.