(Mint Press) – Two major providers of free online college courses — California’s Mountain View Coursera and Massachusetts’ Cambridge edX — have announced an expansion of the universities that will contribute free courses to their services, including many from outside the United States.
Coursera has announced that 29 universities and institutes are joining the venture, bringing the total to 62. Universities represented by Coursera includes Berklee College of Music, Columbia University, the National University of Singapore, Princeton University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, the University of Tokyo, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Pennsylvania.
EdX, the joint venture of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has announced the addition of six new institutions. Colleges represented by edX include McGill University, the Australian National University, Georgetown University, the University of Toronto and Rice University.
Many of the world’s most elite universities have joined the rush to offer “massive open online courses” (MOOCs) in an attempt to make higher education more accessible. While it is still debatable how effective such efforts will be toward educating students, the effort has made available avenues of learning previously unknown to many.
The recent expansions have brought into the mix a number of prestigious foreign schools, which will expand the possibility of more people being able to take advantage of the courses, as well as allow students exposure to different languages and cultures. “Having courses taught in other languages will enable more students to take our classes,” said Andrew Ng, co-founder of Coursera.
MOOCs have offered a tempting alternative to the rising cost of college tuition and the potential debt burden students would have to take on to pay for it. MOOCs are offered free of charge to anyone willing to participate. As an online course — typically in the form of a MP3 or a streamed video — it is convenient for those that have unconventional or unyielding schedules, such as parents or those with full-time jobs.
Millions of students every year participate in this learning platform. However, only a small percentage of institutions for higher learning actively provide courses over the Internet. As these courses are not part of any set curriculum and bear no exchangeable course credit, they are currently only useful for recreational learning.
However, this may be changing. On Feb. 7, the American Council on Education (ACE) announced that five Coursera courses will be recommended for degree credit. The courses — Algebra, Pre-Calculus, Introduction to Genetics and Evolution, Bioelectricity and Calculus — would carry a $100 to $190 fee for webcam-proctored exams, transcripts and verification.
Udacity will also be considered for credit consideration for four courses by the ACE: Developmental Math (Pre-Algebra), College Algebra, Elementary Statistics and Introduction to Computer Science. The ACE is interested in the potential disruptive nature of MOOCs on traditional higher education approaches.
“This relationship with Udacity will serve to further advance ACE’s research into the potential of MOOCs, an intriguing development in the delivery of higher education,” said ACE President Molly Corbett Broad. “As many of our member institutions ask questions about the long-term potential of these courses — such as whether they can help raise degree completion, deepen college curricula and increase learning productivity — ACE is uniquely positioned to uncover the answers.”
It is also possible to earn college credit by passing a proficiency exam. The College Board offer 33 different CLEP exams, each of which is worth 3½ credits if passed. Excelsior College of Albany, N.Y. offers 54 exams in a range of general and upper-level subjects, with each exam worth three to eight credits if passed. Finally, the DANTES Subject Standardized Test covers 38 subjects and is worth three credits per exam if passed.
“College-lite”
However, not all are happy with this trend. Many argue that in the drive to build competencies, a key part of the college experience is lost — relationship building. In denying the student access to other students and the professor, the student is shorted out of a greater learning experience.
Jayson Boyers, Executive Director for the Division of Continuing Professional Studies for Champlain College, wrote in a blog for the Huffington Post, “A college experience — whether taken in person or online — must include ways for students to connect with one another, offering opportunities to interact and relate through shared experiences. The goal of higher education is ultimately to build relationships that provide a foundation upon which to construct a professional life. To that end, students should be strongly encouraged to build relationships – something that requires an entirely different type of learning than many competency-based programs are able to offer.”
It is argued by Harvard Business School that 65 to 85 percent of all job opportunities come from personal relationships. Without the benefit of the “college experience” — the portion of the college education that is learned from living on campus, interacting with fellow students, participating in extracurriculars and meeting with professors — even the best online programs can offer only a percentage of the brick-and-mortar university’s overall benefits.
The cost to the school is equitable to traditional teaching. A good MOOC requires access to online discussion boards, Twitter, document sharing and blogs, and requires high-production quality video, audio and teleconferencing capabilities. When done correctly, it is a time-consuming, complicated and expensive proposition. When done poorly, it is unwatchable and easily disregarded. However, many schools feel that MOOCs are worth the cost.
Minnesota’s objection
Many communities have had difficulties catching up with the new trend of education online. Minnesota, in particular, created a stir when it banned the group from offering Coursera courses to Minnesota residents in 2012 based on a 20-year-old law that banned non-state registered schools and institutions from operating in state borders.
Following Minnesota’s ruling, Coursera changed its Terms of Services: “Coursera has been informed by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education that under Minnesota Statutes (136A.61 to 136A.71), a university cannot offer online courses to Minnesota residents unless the university has received authorization from the State of Minnesota to do so. If you are a resident of Minnesota, you agree that either (1) you will not take courses on Coursera, or (2) for each class that you take, the majority of work you do for the class will be done from outside the State of Minnesota.”
Coursera was not alone in the state’s agenda against online education. Trisha Grimes, a policy analyst for Minnesota’s Office of Higher Education, indicated that letters were sent to all postsecondary institutions operating in or offering courses in Minnesota. Daphne Koller, a co-founder of Coursera, indicated she was surprised to receive such a letter from Minnesota and indicated that the state was the only one to have such an objection.
Due to the furor and outrage this decision created, the Minnesota Office of Higher Education reversed itself: “Obviously, our office encourages lifelong learning and wants Minnesotans to take advantage of educational materials available on the Internet, particularly if they’re free. No Minnesotan should hesitate to take advantage of free, online offerings from Coursera.”
For many, any college is better than no college. While many of these MOOCs providers have yet to figure out how to draw revenue from this venture, the opportunity to offer access to higher education to more people makes this an experiment worth continuing. “As the postsecondary education landscape continues to evolve, assessing where MOOCs may fit into that landscape for credit purposes is an important part of the national completion agenda,” said Cathy A. Sandeen, vice president of ACE’s Center for Education Attainment and Innovation. “MOOCs have the potential to support access and opportunity and provide multiple paths of entry to higher education.”