The US education sector saw the birth and growth of massive open online courses (MOOCs) a couple of years ago. These courses offer access to high quality education to anyone with an internet connection. Many big universities are now experimenting with this style of teaching and offering their courses and professors to teach MOOCs through digital providers like Coursera, Udacity and edX — the three big players on the MOOC panorama. Each of these companies has a unique story to tell, but share a similar vision — to offer greater access to quality education and make learning more interactive and hands-on.
edX
This nonprofit institution, which is based out of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, was founded last year by Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Recognising the possibility to democratise higher education globally, Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology created edX in May 2012 to expand access to high quality online education and to spearhead research to improve learning in traditional campus settings and online,” says Anant Agarwal, president of edX.
It was launched with just one course — Circuits and Electronics, for which 1.55 lakh students from 162 countries enrolled. The initial funding for the company came from Harvard and MIT, with each pledging $30 million. The costs of preparing courses are borne by each member of the X University Consortium.
The company is exploring a variety of revenue models with the goal of becoming self-sustaining. These include fees for certificates of mastery and/or exam proctoring, licensing edX course content to other institutions, etc.
edX employs 75 people, and has a presence in 192 countries with approximately 70 per cent of its students coming from outside USA. The top five countries in terms of student population are USA, India, UK, Brazil and Spain. The students come from varying backgrounds and age groups, ranging from 14 to 76 years old. “These are high-school, college-age students and continuing learners who are either mid-career or retired and taking our courses for enjoyment,” says Agarwal.
Signing up for edX courses is simple. You just need to browse through the courses, register, and sign up for a course. Each course has a start and end date. The material includes weekly video lectures, homework, and, where applicable, online labs, quizzes, exams, or projects. The courses are interactive, and include discussion forums where students can interact with professors, teaching assistants and their peers.
The company has a separate team to work with X University Consortium school partners to help them create video and course production, manage the deployment of courses and develop new technologies to enhance the courses.
edX offers 60 courses, which range from computer science to poetry. The courses are offered through 27 colleges and universities, which are part of the edX consortium. These include University of California-Berkeley, University of Toronto, Cornell University, and Kyoto University. Although most courses are in English, some of them also include a translation in a foreign language, and some have an option for requesting the course in a particular language. “The response has been overwhelmingly positive. edX currently has 1 million registrants,” says Agarwal. There are no registration or course fees, and all course materials are provided free of cost.
However, courses offered at edX may not earn students’ academic credit. “The decision to award credit for online courses is up to each college or university,” says Agarwal. A student, though, can earn a “certificate of mastery” from edX after successfully completing the course. These certificates at present are awarded for free and have been used by students on job and university applications.
edX employs different type of grading tools including self-assessment, peer-assessment, and machine grading using tightly defined rubrics supplied by the professor. Each faculty chooses the mix of grading tools that suit their needs for their particular course.
Coursera
Coursera, a for-profit MOOC provider, is the brainchild of two Stanford professors, Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, who shared a common vision of harnessing technology to expand high quality online education. In 2011, their vision took shape when the first few courses were offered by Stanford to the public for free.
The company formally came into existence in April 2012 with four university partners — UPenn, Stanford, Michigan and Princeton, and funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, New Enterprise Associates. It received $22 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, as well as from university partners — UPenn and Caltech.
Headquartered in Mountain View, California, the firm is structured into different teams — engineering, staffing, business development, administration and course operations. It has 81 educational partners and offers over 300 courses in humanities, social science, law, medicine, music and the arts. Student enrollment is about 3.7 million. “Most Courserians are in their 20s and 30s and have bachelor degrees,” says Andrew. “We are present in over 200 countries and have 35 per cent student enrollment in USA, 21 per cent in Asia and 28 per cent in Europe.”
Learning here is a blend of interactive video content, peer-to peer forums, discussions, and assessments. Given the diversity of courses, grading is not restricted to automated computer programs. Instead the company has pioneered a “peer grading system” to allow meaningful assessment for assignments such as essays, business plans, engineering designs and medical chart reviews. Andrew explains, “Students are trained to grade assignments of their peers and they have to demonstrate their ability to grade an assignment.”
As on similar platforms, all courses here are free. However, being a for-profit firm, Coursera provides paid services such as “Signature Track”, which allows students to obtain verified certificates and official shareable course records and “Career Services,” through which students can connect with prospective employers for positions that complement their skills and interests. These services are offered on an opt-in basis, and their students have been recruited by tech mughals like Facebook, Twitter and AppDirect.
Courses here are gaining credibility within the education world as well. “College credit depends on university discretion,” says Andrew. However, students do have a choice to request academic credit. “American Council Education recently evaluated five of our courses for which students can request college credit,” he explains.
Udacity
Udacity, another major MOOC provider, was born out of a 2011 Stanford University experiment in which Sebastian Thrun, co-founder and CEO of Udacity, and a research professor at Stanford University, and Peter Norvig offered their “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” course online to anyone, for free. More than 1.6 lakh students in over 190 countries enrolled, and there was no looking back for Udacity.
The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and has over 50 employees and 1.5 million student enrollments. Although student registrations vary by course, about 40 percent of the site traffic comes from USA, and 60 per cent comes from rest of the world. So far, Udacity has raised $20 million in total funds from investors Andreessen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures, etc.
Clarissa Shen, VP of strategic business and marketing at Udacity, explains the company’s vision. “Udacity’s mission is to bring accessible, affordable, engaging, and highly effective higher education to the world. We believe that higher education is a basic human right, and we seek to empower our students to advance their education and careers.”
To achieve this goal, Udacity allies both with educational institutions and industry partners. However, it has more industry partners than school alliances. Some of these include Google, Microsoft, Cadence, NVIDIA, and AT&T.
It offers 26 courses across STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) fields. The courses are offered free to anyone with a passion for learning, be it a high-school or a college student or a professional looking to update his skills or seeking a career change. Most courses are captioned in English, but many have subtitles in Spanish, Chinese, French, Portuguese, and Croatian.
Much like other MOOC providers, at Udacity learning is interactive. Shen explains, “Udacity courses are highly interactive with activities, quizzes and exercises interspersed between short videos and talks by instructors and industry experts. It is designed the way our brain learns.” It also offers discussion forums and student meet-ups to encourage peer interaction and support.
Students here receive instant feedback for their assignments. For each course, there is a final assessment exam that students take to receive mastery points and certificates from Udacity. Students can also choose to certify their skills via a proctored exam for a nominal fee, and they can also earn college credit through San Jose State University for $150 (approx `9,000), which include proctored exams and academic support services.
Once a student successfully completes a course, the company offers a recognition of completion certificate. It also provides authenticated evaluation for certain courses where users can get valuable authentication of skills and portfolios, such as HTML5, that would be useful for technology employers.
Job placement also comes in the package. Students can share their resumes on their profile pages that are accessible to Udacity employees and partners. In the past, Udacity students have worked as software engineers, data scientists, assistant instructors, instructors and web developers.
As more students and universities test the waters of this unexplored territory, there are many challenges and roadblocks that MOOCs and its providers have to overcome. But nonetheless these companies have the potential to touch the lives of many students and offer a positive learning experience.
— anuja.seth@gmail.com