Regarding the ‘motive’ behind the coining of the term MOOC, I can say that it was coined after the course had reached more than 1700 sign-ups, and hence was rather more of a descriptive term than a marketing term.

Piror to the course, neither of us expected more than a couple dozen people to be interested enough to sign up, and we would have been quite happy with that level of participation. That said, having 2200 people sign up, and being able to deal with that, showed us that we were on to something special.