The word
‘MOOCS’ sounds like a cute and cuddly cousin to George Lucas’ teddy-bear in a
new Star Wars film. They far from cuddly, though, threatening much of the
higher education with extinction with a lot of help from INDIANS.
Even as you
read this, someone in the country is sitting in front of a computer, attending
a class in public health offered by Harvard University. She has just finished
taking a class, video pop-quiz, responded to a question on the class bulletin board
from one of the 2 million students from around the world, and is getting ready
to watch the next part of the lecture being conducted by her world renowned,
Boston based epidemiology professor [Epi.. what? Click here]. In two weeks she will have finished
her eight week class, written three papers and gained a certificate, if not
college degree.
MOOCS -
Massive Open Online Courses - are quite different from your familiar online,
instructional videos. Almost all of the MOOCS pioneers have Artificial Intelligence
backgrounds, so it’s no surprise that some heavy-duty technology is being
utilized to make the online experience more immersive and interactive, allowing
for features like peer-graded papers.
INDIA, with
its enormous appetite for but paltry supply of quality education, sits in the
middle of this programme. For instance, Coursera, the leading player in this
market which has signed up more than 2 million users in less than a year and
has 630+ courses, says Indians compromise a major percentage of its active
student base and are its second largest cohort, next only to US and ahead of
Britain, Canada and Brazil. It offers courses from 33 of the world’s best
colleges Stanford, Princeton, and the Berklee College of Music included. Here,
students have access to same curriculum, even professors, as on-campus students
would at these respective colleges. [Wanna know How It Works?]
IT’S
COMPLETELY FREE!!
Anant
Agarwal’s edX is the other pioneer in this field but unlike Coursera, it is a
not-for-profit entity with 160+ courses offered on its website. It is a Harvard-MIT
joint venture that received $60 million in funding to put all of college’s
educational material online. It also has begun attracting Indians in waves.
Overall India is second ranking location for edX too. It is also the number-one
location for an online course that is the bedrock of any MIT education in its
campus avatar.[For edX Website- Click here]
Techies are
not only ones flocking to the site. There are a number of courses on business,
management, health, communication, history, arts, research, economics, food and
nutrition, robotics, biotechnology, nanotechnology science and more.
If you have a
choice between learning from an Ivy League college and a local one, which one
would you choose?
But a
question still remains..
Do the
employers in India consider such certificates?
Slowly but steadily
they have started to understand the importance of such courses. These courses are
the future of education landscape. Soon they are starting to charge for these courses.
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