The use of massive open online courses as one of the main resources for non-formal education in the Republic of Kazakhstan is discussed in the article. According to the authors of this research, non-formal education is considered to be the way for personal and professional development as well. The article’s goal is to describe the organization of non-formal education for the students of the educational program “Pedagogy and psychology” and determine its effect on students’ academic performance. To demonstrate the data collected throughout the research process, a number of pedagogical methods as theoretical and comparative analysis, testing, content analysis and pedagogical experiment were utilized. The authors applied mathematical statistics methods including the non-parametric statistical criterion Mann-Whitney U-test and SPSS Statistics 27.0 program in this study. 64 2^nd and 3^rd year students of the educational program “Pedagogy and Psychology” of Pavlodar Pedagogical University named after Alkey Margulan took part in the pedagogical experiment. The following 4 massive open online courses on the Coursera platform were included into the educational process as non-formal education: “Leading teams: Building Effective Team Cultures”, “Effective Problem Solving and Decision Making”, “Project Management: The Basics for Success” and “Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills”. The results of empirical study illustrated that massive open online courses offered by Coursera improved students’ academic performance by 15.6% and gave them the opportunity to pursue their goals outside the classroom, moreover, fostered the development of their metacognitive skills.