Ten state post-secondary institutions have joined with massive open online course (MOOC) provider Coursera to bring improved learning experiences to students. Although the education provider is looking to capture the global market with its anywhere, anytime offerings, state schools in the United States hope to improve content for local students, convincing them to stay in-state instead of taking to the road.
MOOCing Around
According to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, schools such as the State University of New York, the University of Tennessee and the University of New Mexico are hoping to improve their programming by offering massive online options. The idea is to give students greater control over their education — with the caveat that most of the courses offered won’t be for credit, at least at first.
Ultimately, schools want to speed graduation rates and help high school students jump-start their college educations. According to Daphne Koller, one of Coursera’s founders, the MOOC platform should provide “a set of trajectories and pathways that increase capacity and increase access.”
Many universities already offer what’s known as a “blended” classroom comprised of both face-to-face lectures and online materials. University of New Mexico provost Chaouki Abdallah says his school will use portions of the Coursera content, even as it develops its own material. He believes students will want to take some courses entirely online but might opt to keep the classroom experience intact for others. Simply put, MOOCs are an addition, not a replacement.
Faculty Follies
Professors and other educators do have reservations about the MOOC model. As a recent Bloomberg article notes, Harvard University professors from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) are looking for greater input into the school’s HarvardX online tool, which runs on the EdX MOOC platform. Although both EdX and Coursera are seeing phenomenal growth in the United States and abroad, not all educators are keen to have their teaching available on demand. Some worry about standardization and others have concerns about cheating. In the case of the nearly 60 Harvard professors who sent a letter the faculty’s dean, the desire is to “ensure that HarvardX is consistent with our commitment to our students on campus.”
Dennis Yang, president and COO of online course maker Udemy, argues in a recent Huffington Post piece that MOOCs may be coming down the slope of the “hype cycle,” where excitement is replaced with more realistic expectations. While MOOCs give students the ability to access classes at times convenient for them, rather than tying them down to a strict lecture schedule, these courses are worrisome for faculty members concerned about protecting the integrity of post-secondary degrees. Ideally, platforms such as Coursera, EdX and Udacity will help universities develop more sophisticated, student-driven programming, in turn forwarding the cause of affordable higher education.
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