MOOCs: Are they the way forward for higher education?

Pranil Singh, consultant at KANA Software at Greater Chicago area was looking to enhance his skill set. However, extensive work hours did not allow him to quench his thirst for knowledge. On a normal work day, this software engineer shared his concern with a colleague and pat came the reply – Why don’t you enroll for a MOOC? Elated but a little confused, 26-year-old Singh, went back to Google to find a solution to his problems because he had often heard the term MOOCs in the past 2-3 years but never really got to understand what it really meant.

Are you also one among the many trying to understand what MOOCs actually are? Well do not fret; we at shiksha.com will help make this task really simple for you.

Let us start by explaining what a MOOC actually is; MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course. This term was coined in 2008 by Dave Cormier after he analysed a course run by George Siemens and Stephen Downes called ‘Connectivism and Connected Knowledge’. This course till date is considered to be the first MOOC ever made.

What are MOOCs?

These are courses offered on the web to unlimited people with open access. In addition to traditional courseware such as reading material, videos and test or review sections, MOOCs provide interactive user forums that help build a community for students and professors. One wouldn’t be completely wrong in saying that MOOCs are an effective extension to the distance education industry.

The model of MOOCs, wherein, free online courses are offered to masses was made extremely popular by two start-ups – Coursera and Udacity – both of which were started by Stanford University professors. This learning model was then accepted, modified a little and used by MIT and Harvard's online course platform, edX.

SP Kothari, director MIT India Program, feels that the reason why MIT chose to start MOOCs is that this top university of America wanted to make a difference in the world through education and research. Explaining further about Massive Open Online Courses he said, “MOOCs are a means of democratising the access to high-quality education to individuals in every corner of the world.  MOOCs represent a superb confluence of innovation, technological advancements, and a philanthropic commitment to make the world a better place though education.”

Explaining the demand and acceptance of MOOCs in the world, Sebastian Thrun, CEO and co-founder of Udacity in an interview with CNN stated that MOOCs may just be the future of higher education, as the response Udacity got since its launch has been phenomenal.  On why MOOCs are such a hit he was quoted as saying that people are in dire need for good education and further added to this by saying, “ Hundreds of thousands of people just sign up for courses at Udacity because they really care. They really want to advance themselves and their lives and they don't want to pay $50,000 or $100,000 to get there."

Some Important Pointers about MOOCs

• Most of these courses do not have any specific participation requirements. All courses can be taken by anyone from anywhere through the online medium.
• Classes are conducted by prominent academicians or renowned faculty of famous institutions/universities.
• MOOCs typically have classes which run anywhere from one to two hours a week. Average course duration is five weeks, at the minimum.
• Classes are more on self regulatory basis, which essentially means that a student follows the course material, views the videos or reading material given and completes the assessments. Doing all this while interacting and sharing experiences, learning as well as problems with fellow learners.

How are MOOCs different from other online courses?

MOOCs are often confused with different forms of educational material available on the net. We tell you how they are different from each other.

Open Educational Resources (OER): These are digital materials which can be used again and again by a person for either learning something new or for the purpose of research. These resources are freely available on the web and that too through open licenses.

Open Courseware (OCW): These are resources that are available openly and absolutely free of cost from universities. The first and most famous Open Courseware initiative was started in 2011 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): Open Educational Resources were the basis on which the idea of MOOCs was developed. MOOCs offer interactive, participative and open access to courseware and classes at a very large-scale. However, it has a fundamental difference from OCW and OER and that the way in which a course is offered to the learners. In a MOOC, learners are offered an opportunity to participate in the various learning activities which is not the case with OER and OCW.

Popular MOOCs Platforms

• Coursera
• EdX
• Udacity
• Futurelearn
• Openstudy
• Codecademy
• Openlearning
• NPTEL
• Khan Academy
• Udemy
• ALISON

MOOCs: Gaining Popularity in India

In India, MOOCs are still a very new concept. However, experts feel that this trend will definitely pick up as it offers a chance to students who cannot gain admission into top universities to at least gain free access to online courses by those universities.

Dan O'Connell, Associate Director of Communications at edX said, "Currently there are 1.7 registered learners on edX. Approximately 12% of all edX students and 15% of all MITx enrollments are for students from India." Confirming the same, co-founder of Coursera and Stanford University professor, Andrew Ng was quoted in the Telegraph as saying that his learning platform gets a lot of enrolments from Indian students and the states which see the maximum admission is Bangalore followed by New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune. He further adds that in 2012, there were as many as 3,148,016 users of Coursera from India alone.

Seeing such overwhelming numbers and a want among Indians to enhance their skill-set and at the same time learn more, seven IITs, TCS, Infosys, Nasscom and Cognizant came together to launch high-quality free online courses, which could help students become job-ready. Computer science was chosen as the first subject of choice to make MOOCs.

About 15 faculty members from IITs at Delhi, Kharagpur, Roorkee, Bombay, Madras, Guwahati and Kanpur are working on making the courses.

World over, initially students were not sure about the benefits of joining a MOOC. Abhinav Sharma, an MBA shared his fear by stating, “These days degrees can also not guarantee a job, then what good will MOOC be for me, I am not too sure”. However, if you go by an article published by Douglas Belkin of the Wall Street Journal even big employers such as Google and AT&T are hiring people who have certifications of massive open online courses.

Seeing such great response and industry acceptance, the future of MOOCs seems bright. However, on the question if they are the future of higher education, well that only time will tell.