Wake Forest University is continuing to explore the rapidly changing world of online higher education, but it's not yet ready to join other prestigious universities in offering free online classes.

Known as massive open online courses, or MOOCs, these free classes are the latest trend in higher education, with seven of the top universities in U.S. News and World Report's annual compilation agreeing to put a host of classes online for anyone to take.

Duke University is the latest to join the MOOC movement, announcing last week that it has joined Coursera, a startup company that has teamed with 17 universities to offer free online classes, ranging in everything from astrobiology to world music.

Other Coursera partners include Stanford, Princeton, Johns Hopkins and the University of Pennsylvania. Another company, edX, features courses from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Most universities do not offer college credit for the classes. However, the University of Washington, one of the new Coursera members, said it will offer college credit to be used toward a degree, for a fee.

More than 650,000 people from 190 countries have taken classes through Coursera since it debuted last fall.

The staff and faculty at Wake Forest have debated the merits of free online classes for several months, with no decisive stand coming from those talks, said Rogan Kersh, the university's new provost.

"To rush headlong into a new, exciting mode of delivery because it's new and exciting is a mistake," Kersh said. "There's a whole set of providers and ventures and combinations and coalitions of schools, and Wake is in that conversation on a bunch of fronts."

The debate often centers around two opposing viewpoints, Kersh said.

"You could view it as an end of itself, that this is how higher education should be and will be delivered," he said of MOOCs. "On the other hand, there's a perspective that this is a wonderful set of tools that can enhance the pedagogical experience, but it's not an end of itself, that you're not providing the full education experience when you're putting it online."

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Wake Forest University not ready to offer free online courses