Receiving individual course credits or a certificate from Yale, Cambridge or Harvard for free and without even leaving home is now possible. The growing trend of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) makes a wide range of lessons free and available to almost everyone with internet access. Whether you are in Paris, Kuala Lumpur or Richmond, you have the same opportunity to learn with the best universities in the world and get a certificate when you succeed. Popular with the general public since 2012, MOOCs represent an evolution of correspondence-style courses. So will the future of education and training be through these new free interactive educational platforms?
Gregor Kiczales is a professor in the Computer Science Department at UBC who taught a MOOC called Computer Science Problem Design. Through his involvement in the MOOC planning at UBC, Kiczales has noticed an explosion of interest in this concept over the last year. For example, 130,000 people from every Canadian province and almost every country in the world registered for the first free online course UBC offered two years ago. Universities are taking on the challenge of combining technology and learning as they to reinvent themselves in the digital revolution.
Kiczales explains this choice: “UBC finds in online open courses a way to be more open and attract more students.”
According to the Babson Survey Research Group, the number of higher education institutions offering MOOC initiatives doubled in the past year. Kiczales adds that these programs offer universities a way to share resources between various departments and schools.
“We are in a period of improvement where the MOOC has a role similar to a textbook for classroom students and teachers,” says Kiczales.
An imaginary battle between online learning and campus education
However, not everyone views MOOCs as positive and some schools are sounding the alarm, highlighting the loss of revenue brought by this new form of education. Kiczales disagrees.
“Many people who are enrolling in these online courses have already graduated. They just need or want to learn more about a specific topic, related to their background, or even just extend their general knowledge.”
Deanna Cheng, 28, enrolled for similar reasons. She is a journalism student at Langara College. Cheng enrolled in a MOOC at Columbia University in New York from her home in New Westminster and completed a five-week course.
“I like having an academic education but I also wanted to expand my digital skills and learn in a bigger group of people. It is great but intense and hard because of the amount of people and also because you still feel lonely,” says Cheng.
Because students are working independently, they must remain committed to complete their course. Cheng enrolled in a second one and she gave up before
the end.
“Next time I will be pickier and ask myself if I really want to learn about this topic before enrolling,” says Cheng.
MOOC programs not only attract young undergraduates, but also working professionals, graduate and continuing education students.
“Some of them have more than 20 years of working experience,” according to Kiczales.
“It only takes a minute to get enrolled”
For Kiczales, this battle between campus learning and MOOCs is more a matter of perspective.
“If you casually watch a seven-minute video, you will still have learned something. And isn’t that what matters?” says Kiczales.
For Kiczales, this is why, according to a study by the University of Pennsylvania, only four per cent of students succeeding at a MOOC is meaningless.
“Just remember that it takes the time of a click on a mouse to get enrolled and it doesn’t cost anything,” says Kiczales.
Kiczales says there is no reason to panic because the MOOC will never replace a real university campus, but it is an interesting and growing way of educating more people.
