Read a very interesting article from the New York Times News Service, printed, a few days back, in The Hindu on Massively Open Online Courses. Some points from it, including some quoted phrase(s), are given below.
Profs. happiness with large downloads of their teaching videos is a fascinating human aspect of online learning. I mean, the Profs. are the main guys. They need to be interested. The thrill of teaching orders of magnitude more students seems to be almost an irresistible draw. The 'altruistic' teacher sharing his knowledge with the world-community - fascinating human aspect of online learning for me.
There are some serious concerns. A high-dropout rate has been reported by some sources - but even if 10% of 160,000 passed out, it is still a great number!
Rampant cheating is reported by one source. I am not surprised by that. However I feel that once exam services like what Udacity is reported to have tied up with Pearson Education comes into play, then it may work out. Those students who cheat with assignments during the course will know that their ignorance will make them trip up on the paid exam - so they will make the effort to learn.
Eventually they will have to find a revenue stream. But I think the Internet has lots of time-proven business models where the customer gets his service for free but his usage of the service is converted to some gain. E.g. gmail usage resulting in advertising money for Google. The impression that I am getting is that venture capital is pushing this model first into respectable delivery. Once that is done, they will find a way to make money from it. Due to the scale, like for iPhone/iPod Touch apps, the price can be really affordable. I mean, I have bought iPod Touch apps. for 1$, 2$, 10$ equivalent - unthinkable for PC business model. Once the online education guys want to monetize they may make huge money from millions of Indians, Chinese etc. besides Western market students who may be very willing to shell out, say, 20$ equivalent per course/subject.
I think there is tremendous potential for new education providers who provide a college experience but use mainly MOOC teaching and combine it with good examination services like what Pearson is supposed to have got into. Such education providers will save costs of most faculty - they may need some administrative kind of faculty - and pass on the saved cost to students. These education providers may get accredited by international academic accreditation agencies and also tie-up with professional certification organizations like the IEEE CSDP. That would make for a pretty strong software development professional education provider.
Of course, elite education may still mainly be done in residential education environments. Face to face interaction with inspired & knowledgeable faculty along with shoulder to shoulder interaction with sharp peers is usually vital for excellent learning. But for those who are not that elite or have money problems or geographical location problems, I feel MOOCs based education providers may be a very attractive education solution which could also become quite scalable.
It is less than a year since I read about Stanford's AI class offering. In such a short period of time so much change in higher education circles in the US is amazing. I would not have believed it if somebody had told me that all this is going to happen in so short a time, a year ago.
Of course, it is still a 'Wild West' area. But, IMHO, surely something substantial will emerge once things settle down - the exact "settled down" form or forms it will take are not clear now but that is not so big an issue. The main thing is the movement. I remember the free email wave when I came to know of it - hotmail was the first IFIRC - but I got onto the yahoo bandwagon. It was unbelievable then. After gmail it has become almost a part of modern life, a given.
Is MOOC going to become a given like free email?
- It gives a current-state picture of Coursera as growing in university partners as well as courses offered with over 100 MOOC courses to be offered this fall.
- It states that MOOCs were unknown till last year, but now are "likely to be a game-changer, opening higher education to hundreds of millions of people."
- Revenue stream does not seem to be an immediate concern.
- A Prof. was thrilled with thousands of downloads of his videos.
- Online cheating and quality of peer-to-peer grading are concerns. Paid examinations conducted by global education companies may help.
- Concern that MOOCs may be a danger to universities - however, one Prof. thinks that MOOCs will provide diplomas (informal type of certifications) with in-class universities provide degrees.
Profs. happiness with large downloads of their teaching videos is a fascinating human aspect of online learning. I mean, the Profs. are the main guys. They need to be interested. The thrill of teaching orders of magnitude more students seems to be almost an irresistible draw. The 'altruistic' teacher sharing his knowledge with the world-community - fascinating human aspect of online learning for me.
There are some serious concerns. A high-dropout rate has been reported by some sources - but even if 10% of 160,000 passed out, it is still a great number!
Rampant cheating is reported by one source. I am not surprised by that. However I feel that once exam services like what Udacity is reported to have tied up with Pearson Education comes into play, then it may work out. Those students who cheat with assignments during the course will know that their ignorance will make them trip up on the paid exam - so they will make the effort to learn.
Eventually they will have to find a revenue stream. But I think the Internet has lots of time-proven business models where the customer gets his service for free but his usage of the service is converted to some gain. E.g. gmail usage resulting in advertising money for Google. The impression that I am getting is that venture capital is pushing this model first into respectable delivery. Once that is done, they will find a way to make money from it. Due to the scale, like for iPhone/iPod Touch apps, the price can be really affordable. I mean, I have bought iPod Touch apps. for 1$, 2$, 10$ equivalent - unthinkable for PC business model. Once the online education guys want to monetize they may make huge money from millions of Indians, Chinese etc. besides Western market students who may be very willing to shell out, say, 20$ equivalent per course/subject.
I think there is tremendous potential for new education providers who provide a college experience but use mainly MOOC teaching and combine it with good examination services like what Pearson is supposed to have got into. Such education providers will save costs of most faculty - they may need some administrative kind of faculty - and pass on the saved cost to students. These education providers may get accredited by international academic accreditation agencies and also tie-up with professional certification organizations like the IEEE CSDP. That would make for a pretty strong software development professional education provider.
Of course, elite education may still mainly be done in residential education environments. Face to face interaction with inspired & knowledgeable faculty along with shoulder to shoulder interaction with sharp peers is usually vital for excellent learning. But for those who are not that elite or have money problems or geographical location problems, I feel MOOCs based education providers may be a very attractive education solution which could also become quite scalable.
It is less than a year since I read about Stanford's AI class offering. In such a short period of time so much change in higher education circles in the US is amazing. I would not have believed it if somebody had told me that all this is going to happen in so short a time, a year ago.
Of course, it is still a 'Wild West' area. But, IMHO, surely something substantial will emerge once things settle down - the exact "settled down" form or forms it will take are not clear now but that is not so big an issue. The main thing is the movement. I remember the free email wave when I came to know of it - hotmail was the first IFIRC - but I got onto the yahoo bandwagon. It was unbelievable then. After gmail it has become almost a part of modern life, a given.
Is MOOC going to become a given like free email?
The Professors Who Make the MOOCs, dated March 18th 2013, has an interesting survey of over 100 professors who have taught a MOOC.
ReplyDelete