In the framework of higher education, in recent years, there has been an evolution of access to open educational resources and, more recently, to the new Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). In this context, nowadays there are already many universities in Europe that have begun offering MOOCs and certifying their students for it. But, do the students of these institutions know what these type of courses are?

As part of a doctoral thesis, this paper presents the first results of the consultation to the students of the University of Barcelona (UB) (which occupies a competitive position at national, European and worldwide levels), with the aim of identifying the state of knowledge of these students about MOOCs. Through a quantitative methodology based on a closed questionnaire, the results show that, of the 1281 students who participated in the research, over 80% were unaware of what was a MOOC and less than 5% had ever participated in one. Most of these UB students who enrol in these courses do it mainly by interest in the subject or to have access to high quality materials and resources and to keep learning. These students are dropping out of these online courses in 50% of cases, mainly due to a lack of time.

Some of the findings of this analysis show that, although this is a teaching method aimed specifically at undergraduate students, in the Spanish context this could not be totally true.