MOOC is an acronym for Massive Open Online Courses. This is the hottest topic of universities, as they provide broader access to top professors. Some courses have attracted 100,000 users, most from overseas, who pay nothing to access.
Coursera, a for-profit entity, is comprised of 62 universities including Princeton, Stanford, UPenn, and University of Michigan. edX, a non-profit, includes schools like MIT, Harvard, and the University of Texas.
The question is how to make it work…how do you make money when the courses are free? How do you effectively test that many students? Does the course count towards a degree?
My biggest question is the retention of the learning, which is historically low for lectures and reading. This would be the same argument against online learning. Instead, learners should have an experience, a discussion, an interaction to fully engage in the learning, and improve retention and application. Without this, I worry that one does not truly improve his/her employability or deepen learning.
Of course, this then takes us to the argument of whether your business is more interested in hiring an employee with the credentials (a degree….and only 60% of four year college students are graduating within six years today) OR the know-how to perform a job….but that is for another day.
Would you take/have you taken a MOOC?
