Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are big news in higher education at the moment, with hundreds of the world's leading universities offering free access to lectures and other resources. Many MOOC providers operate through platforms such as edX, a not-for-profit consortium formed by MIT, Harvard and Berkeley, or commercially oriented platforms such as Udacity and Coursera. The last two provide the courses free, but aim to make money by charging for certification, or by making data on MOOC graduates available to recruiters. And the numbers involved are huge: MOOCs can attract tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of enrolments.

In almost complete contrast to big business MOOCs, there is the VLC, the Virtual Linguistics Campus of the University of Marburg. The VLC has been in operation for 11 years, it is not part of any platform, it is (at the time of writing) the only provider offering MOOCs in linguistics, and it operates on relatively modest numbers measured in hundreds.

The fact that the VLC has a history is significant in that it has already built up a wealth of resources. Anyone can freely access more than 200 e-lectures on the VLC's Youtube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/LinguisticsMarburg). And on the VLC's own website (http://linguistics.online.uni-marburg.de/) there is a wealth of resources available either free or for a modest charge. It is possible to register for paid courses leading to accreditation, or to pay for ‘Global Access’ to the course materials if accreditation is not required. Global Access is particularly useful for teachers in that it allows VLC resources to be used in the classroom.

The first MOOC offered by the VLC, Phonetics Phonology and Transcription, ran from mid April to the end of May 2013, attracting 420 students from 62 countries. The course consisted of 12 units beginning with topics such as vowels, consonants, suprasegmental features, moving on to transcription exercises for RP and NAE, and finishing with comparative phonology and distinctive features. Each unit had a video lecture (sometimes two) given by Prof. Jürgen Handke, who is very much the public face of the VLC. Supporting materials included downloadable slides from the interactive whiteboard as used in the video, extracts from textbooks presented as document scans, non-assessed practical sheets, and assessed worksheets. There was also an online discussion forum for participants. All the materials are in English, as is the administration of the course. About a quarter of the students who enrolled achieved an average of 60% or more across the worksheets and so were awarded a certificate of accomplishment. About half of those who enrolled received a certificate of participation for continuing to follow the course but without achieving the necessary score on the worksheets.

Handke is an engaging e-lecturer and I have found all his videos both accessible and entertaining. They are generally well paced, but of course if something is dealt with too quickly you can re-run or pause the e-lecture if you want to hear it again or cross-check with some other resource. Besides the e-lectures, units contain a variety of other resources. Perhaps the most useful are the various interactive charts: IPA symbols, the vowels chart, and the consonants chart (which has animations of the vocal tract to illustrate the place and manner of articulation). In each case, a click on the symbol plays the sound.

The worksheets associated with the units varied greatly in their level of difficulty. The early worksheets each consisted of 10 multiple choice questions, apparently drawn randomly from an item bank. These questions were mostly factual recall of definitions, concepts and famous names in the field. Students on the MOOC are allowed to re-take a worksheet as often as they wish in order to get above the 60% level – or in order to reach 100% for the more ambitious. I found that getting questions wrong was a very good way of focussing on what I had not learned adequately, and I was happy to do more reading – not always on the VLC – before attempting a worksheet again. Given unlimited re-takes it is quite straightforward to reach full marks. The later worksheets on transcription, one of RP and the other of NAE, were very much more difficult, partly because transcription is less definitive and so inherently more difficult than factual recall, and partly because some of the solutions were, at best, arguable: for example, a clear open ‘e’ that was shown in the solution as a schwa, or the ‘correct’ transcription of one NAE word making it sound like RP, or the need for an IPA symbol that was not available on the virtual keyboard provided. Then the worksheet on distinctive features was sufficiently challenging for the rules to be different: perfect answers are not required! The more difficult worksheets generated a lot of debate on the students' forum, with Prof. Handke responding helpfully and, in one or two cases, amending questions that were proving unsatisfactory.

Building on the success of the first MOOC, the VLC is offering three more from the autumn, Linguistics 101, 102 and 103 – numbers which hint at more to come. 101 Fundamentals provides an introduction to phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. 102 Speech Science covers the anatomy of speech, the physics of speech, the auditory system and speech perception. 103 The Nature of Meaning promises to be a more philosophically oriented course with units on semantics, sense and reference, theories of word meaning, propositions, predicates, speech acts, deixis, ambiguity and vagueness. These MOOCs will have a slightly different structure from the first. They are free to take, and those who complete a course will receive a free statement of participation. The statement of accomplishment for those who achieve 60% or better on the worksheets will, however, require payment of a small fee, yet to be announced.

In these early days, the economic basis of MOOCs is far from clear. It is not obvious for how long MOOCs delivered free can co-exist with traditional (and expensive) university education. But for as long as MOOCs of high quality are available free they must rate as the best bargains in education. I have already signed up to the VLC's Linguistics 101, 102 and 103.