Before discussing the future of free education and MOOCs, watch this great video that will define and outline its principles for people who are unfamiliar with the term.
As you've watched, MOOCs are essentially open and free university and college level courses designed to give the user further self-interested knowledge on a subject. However, these courses are also participatory and engaging in nature, which leads to both develop networking skills and independence in learning.
A great example is Khan Academy, partly because of its history. In 2006, Salman Khan, a graduate of both MIT and Harvard, began tutoring his nieces and nephews on subjects that they needed help in in their high school courses. He would post a detailed, step-by-step video on YouTube, and send them the link, where they would watch, and learn a more comprehensive approach to their studies. After a short time, other YouTube users found the links and began learning from these videos originally intended for his family. Within months, these lessons grew in such popularity, and broad subject content, that by 2012, 200 million lessons had been delivered, all for free.
The viability of these lessons is based on two things: credibility of Salman Khan (and, now, many other instructors), and the free cost. While these courses or modules do not grant credits towards degrees, the goal has been simply to develop the pursuit of learning and education.
The implications of this is that, now, children in developing countries, that have very few options in their future, can learn about any subject in great detail from credible Harvard graduates, completely for free, while only requiring an internet connection. Theoretically, the possibilities are endless, as individuals can choose to either learn, or not learn, and become whatever they want to be in their lives. This also applies to countries like Canada, where as students at Sheridan College, we can learn more than what we are taught in our courses to give us a competitive and specialized edge in the job market- the idea being you decide if you want to be successful in an increasingly competitive world.
The integration of MOOCs in the future will likely see colleges and universities granting credit for completing course work from online courses, or such sites as Coursera and MIT OpenCourseWare offering degree programs of their own. Last month, it was announced that Antioch U, a university in America, will be the first school in North America to offer credit for completing Coursera courses. It can be expected that by 2020, this trend will have grown substantially, and one can only wonder about how modern higher educational institutions will adapt to the availability of free courses that offer credibility. Further, it can be expected that by 2020, some developing countries will begin seeing a boost in their worldwide IQ rankings, as the popularity of MOOCs grow, and populations begin learning to better themselves and their situations.
Great blog, Curtis. I really love the fact that now children in developing countries have higher education options that they may or may not have. Here is an interesting link that focuses on these online universities putting pressure on universities in third world countries to offer more free courses for others, seeing as more than one half of the applicants who signed up for free university courses were outside of the United States.
ReplyDeleteAfter watching the video and reading the blog, it is quite simple to see why MOOCs and other programs similar to it have the potential of being highly successful. As a college student, I know that post secondary education can be extremely costly and feel that an alternative that is free of charge will be popular among countless college and/or university students. While most colleges and universities do not accept these online tutorials to count towards credits, I believe that they should be because they are taught by highly educated beings which makes them similar to onlie courses offered by post secondary institutions.
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