The term MOOC (also appearing as Mooc and pronounced like the noise that a cow makes with the addition of a /k/ sound) first appeared in 2008, and was allegedly coined by Dave Cormier, a web innovations expert based at the University of Prince Edward Island in Canada. Cormier used MOOC to describe a course created by Canadian professors George Siemens and Stephen Downes, which was offered for a fee to a small number of university students, but also simultaneously offered online to over 2000 students for free.