DAVOS, Switzerland — She may not have been the youngest speaker ever at the World Economic Forum in Davos, but Khadija Niazi, 12, was certainly captivating.
Hundreds of the conference’s well-heeled attendees listened intently as Ms. Niazi, of Lahore, Pakistan, described her experience with massive open online courses, known as MOOCs, that are spreading rapidly around the globe.
MOOCs are vastly extending the reach of professors at some of the world’s best universities, particularly at Stanford, Harvard, M.I.T., Yale, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania and Duke.
Ms. Niazi has been taking courses, free so far, from Udacity and Coursera, two of the earliest providers of this new form of instruction. Her latest enthusiasm is for astrobiology, because she is fascinated by U.F.O.’s and wants to become