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Abstract: Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have emerged as a paradigm in academic teaching and research. Year of 2012 has been declared as "the year of MOOCs" marking the point when renowned universities have joined their efforts with private companies in order to offer open and free, online education. MOOCs have been used in a plethora of scenarios, starting with offering entire courses and specializations and ending in blending them in university courses. Consequently, a large amount of research has been directed towards the evaluation of MOOCs' usage and existent solutions. Big data techniques, machine learning algorithms, sentiment analysis are just a few of the techniques used to evaluate MOOCs-based teaching scenarios. One of the research subject which is still under development is that of applying MOOCs into private companies. How many companies are using MOOCs? Which are the scenarios in which the MOOCs are being used? What benefits are mainly looked after by the companies? Even if we find different state-of-the-art papers giving different guidelines about how the industry can actually take advantage of MOOCs, the application of MOOCs into industrial environments, projects and teams is still a topic that needs to be further addressed. The aim of this paper is to understand the degree in which private companies are using MOOCs. In this regard, the present study targeted international companies, but also organizations from Europe and Romania. The results are extremely promising into further developing of the presented approach.

Keywords: MOOCs; corporate education; blended courses.

I. INTRODUCTION

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have become omnipresent in literature and discussions about the future of higher education and distance learning. The Massive Open Online Courses have been defined in [1] as being "sets of learning activities and resources, web-based, freeof- charge and usually with no prerequisites, which can be explored simultaneously by hundreds of people". There are different authors [2], [3] who come and question the role of MOOCs as being part of the "future of education", but also propose that further research should be undergone in order to understand the impact on business models, certification, definitions of completion, pedagogical approaches and delivery methods. Other authors [4], [5], [6] offer arguments and case-studies in favour of MOOCs as being part of the future of higher...

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