a real game changer
I fully accept that I’m seldom the first one to hear about anything that matters but I do take the view that, if I’ve not heard about it, then there’s the chance you’ve not heard about it either. And this certainly applies to the current, and booming, ‘Mooc’ revolution. I first read about it only last week and I have no doubts, none at all, that this movement is going to change the way we all view further education in the very near future. Forget ebay, forget facebook, forget porn, this is what the internet has been built for.
First thing first, Mooc stands for Massive Open Online Course and, in essence, it refers to courses (usually University courses) that are being thrown open and made available to one and all. Yeah, courses have been available like this for years and the OU have been broadcasting on TV since the late 60s, but the big difference is, that via the interest of and collaboration with, Silicon Valley, these are, by and large, free of charge and open to everyone. On a massive scale.
The first one attracted 25 ‘normal’ fee paying students and 2300 ‘Moocs’. The University of Edinburgh’s first foray into this field lead to 100,000 students signing up, four times the number of current undergraduates on campus. In 2011, an Artificial Intelligence course offered at US University Stanford, attracted over 160,000. Of the 23,000 that ‘graduated’, the top 400 students were Moocs. Leading Mooc evangelist Counsera now has five million students spread across 400 course. This is definitely gaining momentum and the traction is undeniable. The gold-rush within the world’s leading university brands is afoot, and with development costs averaging £250,000, the competition for successful Mooc student recruitment is going to be messy.
There are obviously downsides to this style of distanced learning including the potential for a higher level of solitude, a lack of one-to-one interaction, missing out on the ‘university experience’ and poor feedback to the tutors and lecturers but these are surely counterbalanced by the option of studying when it suits, a lack of the £27,000 tuition fees, and huge debts thereafter. Further understandable concerns include the accurate and consistent marking of coursework and essays, the huge amount of post-lecture feedback in the thousands of forums (info overload on a massive scale), and how to ‘validate’ the qualifications in the world of work. Consequently, current graduation rates (12-15%) and measurable successes remain low but surely these will be addressed in the medium term? It seems highly likely that t’internet is set to disrupt higher education more radically than it has done even within the fields of music and publishing. You heard it here first!
