Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

If you haven’t heard of the acronym MOOC, then you’re behind the eight ball on the future of learning. Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Princeton, Penn, Michigan and Berkeley are in some stage or another of offering free online education to anyone who signs up. A recent Inside Higher Ed article highlights Harvard and MIT’s combined venture totaling $60 million, considered the largest investment in MOOC technology to date with the goal to reach “hundreds of thousands of students at one time” from all over the world. Professors teaching the courses will be the same ones teaching in the traditional classrooms on campus. And, in terms of content quality, “the courses will have to go through an approval process at each campus to make sure they measure up to standards of rigor and usability”. Besides the aforementioned benefits related to quality and cost, student and adult learners do not have to be enrolled at Harvard or MIT. MOOC participants will have an opportunity to study across disciplines such as the humanities, natural sciences and social sciences. And, if a student is signing on from a foreign country, language barriers are eliminated with web technology. Learn more about MOOCs at http://tinyurl.com/6p2xkcl.