Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in higher education
The institutional affiliation
Cause and Effect - The potential effects of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in higher education
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is a phenomenon recently appeared in the online training system. The first attempts of its creating were taken 5 years ago; and now MOOCs attract a considerable interest from media, higher education institutions and venture companies. All of them consider MOOCs being a promising direction. These courses can be taken as broaden options of online learning in terms of their public access and scope. They also give an opportunity to introduce new business models including elements of the open education. This includes the ability of separating the teaching process from testing and accreditation for differential pricing and implementation of marketing activities.
Massification opportunities offered by MOOCs attracted much interest of various governments, educational institutions and commercial organizations. There have been developed several unique platforms of MOOCs offering independent courses or courses in conjunction with any university. Thus, more and more higher institutions are becoming to be interested in MOOCs to improve their access, marketing and promotion, as well as to develop a new source of income. Although, motivation of students is different, for many of them it is quite difficult to continue their education at a higher establishment. So, the value of the participation certificate of such courses at the labor market has not been determined yet. Moreover, other potential business models are still being developed and are in need of improvement.
The primary purpose of MOOCs is to make available studing and provide free access to higher education for more students from different countries. In contrast to the traditional university online courses, MOOCs have two key features (Wikipedia, 2012):
1. Open access (anyone can become a member of free online courses);
2. Immensity (endless quantity of people can participate in the courses).
The appearance of innovations in MOOCs proves the existence of interaction of various social, economic and engineering solutions in the field of education in a global context. Public education can play an important role in ensuring access to education for everyone and overcome the difficulties posed by a constantly changing environment. Among these changes are (Wiley, 2009):
1. Globalization and increasing internationalization in the field of higher education;
2. Increasing demand for access to higher education;
3. Increasing number of adult students (demographic aspect);
4. Wide access to technology and communication;
5. Need in changing of pricing policy, as well as availability of finance and economic models for higher education.
Thus, there is a clear need of new business models and innovations in higher education in order to cope with the challenges of social and economic changes in the future.
Let us take a look at some most popular educational initiatives of MOOCs that have been already implemented and successfully work online. First, there is a charitable project called edX created by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. 60 million USD was invested in this project. The students successfully passed exams may pay a little sum of money to get a certificate confirming the course was attended.
Next popular platform is Coursera. 22 million USD was invested in this commercial company by Caufield & Byers Education, New Enterprise Associates and Kleiner, Perkins. It has four partners: Universities of Michigan and Pennsilvania, Prinston University and Standford University. For small amount of money one can also get a certificate of attendence.
One more commercial project founded by Sebastian Thrun, David Stivenson and Mike Sokolski is UDACITY. 21,1 million USD was invested by Andreessen Horowitz and Charles River Ventures. Here the students get the certificates of attandance free of charge. There are also some other platforms available.
In recent years, the process of social adaptation of the Internet technology has been changed in connection with the dissemination and wider usage in more economically developed countries. However, with the MOOCs widespread as an educational approach, there is a risk that the current enthusiasm around the courses comes from a separate group of educated people dealing with computer technology. These people are capable of organizing the complex and sometimes confusing process of online learning. In general, there are some concerns about pedagogy and quality of existing MOOCs, with a clear division between the approaches based on the learning process and content. Some Massive Open Online Courses have philosophical motivation, and some of them are seen as a profitable business. However, in both cases, the challenge is to find a real suitable model that will determine the continuous development of MOOCs.
Massive Open Online Courses are capabale of opening the higher education by providing affordable, flexible, accelerated courses free of charge or at a small fee for students interested in learning. MOOCs popularity attracted the attention of higher education institutions and private investors all around the world who were looking for ways to promote their brands and routes to market education. Public education provides new opportunities for innovation in higher education, which will enable institutions and scientists to discover new learning models and innovative methods of teaching and learning. Although, at the national and international levels new forms of funding, quality assurance and accreditation will be required in order to support new approaches and models of higher education.
References
Wikipedia,. (2014). Massive open online course. Retrieved 21 October 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course
Wiley, D., & Hilton, J., (2009). Openness, Dynamic Specialization, and the Disaggregated Future of Higher Education. Retrieved 21 October 2014, from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/768/1414
