How many times
you have felt that there is perhaps a need to upgrade your knowledge of the
latest things in your field of choosing? Or how many times have you felt, that ‘it
would be nice to know more about a subject that you had perhaps enjoyed during
college days’ but the call of duty, from both personal and professional life,
didn’t allow you the opportunity? Well now there is a chance to learn all of
that for free through MOOCs. And there is also an option to pay and be
certified.
MOOC
Massive open
online courses (or MOOCs) are online courses trying to share college-level knowledge.
All lectures and course materials are accessed online, and to check the
knowledge given by the course there is a process whereby online tests would be
available. In some cases there is a provision for peer review, where in other
students will check your copy while you will check the other students’ copy.
“There are two aspects to
MOOCs: a technology platform that can enable new pedagogy and mode of delivery
that increases the reach to a much larger audiences,” says Sundar S
Balasubramaniam, Dean, Academic and Resource Planning BITS Pilani. He further
adds, “We believe that the technology is still evolving
and there are many aspects of MOOCs which will complement conventional learning
but also open up new modes of learning.” Balasubramaniam believes that MOOCs are likely to prove beneficial for mature
learners and varied groups where learners will be able to learn at their own
pace and way.
Isaac
Chuang, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for
electrical engineering and computer science and of physics, and also co-lead of
a research team from MIT and Harvard shares the vision and thought behind MOOC.
He says, “MIT sees that MOOCs may lead to the spread of
knowledge worldwide, and improvements in on-campus education, such as in
residential universities like MIT and Harvard.”
Stanford, another
world renowned university, runs its own instance of an open-source online
learning platform (Stanford OpenEdX) that supports research and experimentation
in instructional design. In a report on MOOC 2013, John Mitchell Vice Provost Stanford
was quoted as “Stanford's vision is much
broader than MOOCs. We're thinking about how we will best educate students for
generations to come.”
There are two
directories which track all major MOOCs available online – www.mooc-list.com
and www.class-central.com. One can either look for universities followed by courses
offered or they can search for specific topics like – computer science or
artificial intelligence, economics, music, etc, – and then decide on the
university. Among the most popular MOOCs are Coursera, edX, saylor.org, Canvas,
Alison, Udemy, etc.
How will it help?
Abhay Tandon, an employee at Scaale Capital, took a course through the platform of Coursera, from
University of Maryland’s on ‘Developing
Innovative Ideas for New Companies’. He says that his MBA degree gave a strong
theoretical understanding, but Coursera classes gave him a firm practical
basis, like realizing how investors in Spain differ from those in the U.K.
Shashi Kant, a student at IIT, is doing various courses from
Coursera and edX related to computer science. He reasons, “I am doing courses
related to computer science as it supplements my course and it could pay off in
career too as it provides you world class knowledge at just no cost.” He
further adds that in the industry, the tag of your college will get you a
platform but after that an individual will survive only through knowledge. He
says, “Many of my friends (mostly students) are also doing these courses to
improve their knowledge.”
Ketan Kapoor, Co-Founder and CEO, Mettl, a skill
based online assessment platform, says, “We have seen the industry move from knowledge
based hiring to skill based hiring.” He points that on the job skills and
competencies are the most important selection criteria for most organizations. “If
individuals are taking up the initiative of upskilling themselves, adding new
feathers to their hats - they definitely come across as self-starters and
motivated individuals to the hiring teams - apart from the obvious skill adds,”
says Kapoor. However adding a word of caution against high hopes, he says, “The
candidate applying with a certain skill set learnt from MOOCs will have a
disadvantage against an experienced professional who has used that same skill
set in his projects.”
Ajit
Joshi, who was previously working as National Presales Manager at Ingram Micro
India, says "One of the interesting incident was when I started watching
the videos of Introduction to Operations,
I realized there were so many things that I can implement at my company
bringing in more efficiency and better coordination between departments."
Ashutosh Telang, EVP & Global
Head HR, Marico says, “At Marico, we encourage employees to continuously
upgrade their knowledge. Learning by doing is core to our development
philosophy and this is supplemented by training, education, perspective
building and coaching.”
Kapoor’s views were resonated in
Telang’s words as well. Telang says, “Education and experience play an
important role in assessing an individual’s capability.” Furthermore he says, “While
potential talent and talent within the organization upgrade their domain
knowledge through online courses or MDPs, what really matters is the ability to
apply this knowledge in their work context to make a difference.”
Futures of MOOCs
Telang opines, “Access to curriculum
through MOOCs conducted by reputed institutes enhances the credibility of the
education and as more people enroll in MOOCs, organizations will have to take
cognizance of this and revise their hiring guidelines.”
“The average age
of learners registering for MITx courses is between 26 and 35 years old. Many of these folks are professionals seeking
to learn new things. Such lifelong
learning will naturally be of interest to corporations seeking to improve their
workforces,” says Chuang of MIT.
Balasubramaniam of BITS
Pilani says, “The best thing about MOOCs apart from the
immediate and tangible benefits is that it is forcing educators and
administrators to think about learning and education in a fundamentally new way.
In India MOOCs have the potential to enable half a billion India youth to
access expertise in different domains.” Companies in a few countries have only
invested in MOOCs but are also leveraging MOOCs for in-house training.
Acceptability may take a few years but it is bound to happen.
The Tough Part
Scheduling is an important
criteria if you are student/working professional - some MOOCs allow you to join
anytime of the year and some have the semester system, some allow you to learn
at your own pace and some have strict schedules for lectures and assignments.
Some courses provide you with a certification and some don't.
“The main challenge I found
was varying deadlines because different Universities have different time issues
in accordance of IST,” says Kant.
The Easy Part
Among the benefits,
the most common benefit that everyone talked about were, since it is a video
lecture you can pause and rewind to as many times as you want until you
understand the concept. In a traditional classroom, it is highly unlikely. Secondly,
one can do it anywhere as per their convenience, whether traveling in a bus,
sitting in a cyber cafe or relaxing on a Sunday at home. Third, classroom
participants comes from all over the world, hence, giving a complete sense of
global learning with lot of new perspectives added from different angles in the
discussion forums.
In Kant’s experience, “the good thing going through this format is
that you are completely free to go at your own pace. In many courses you'll get
new iterations of the course in just one or two upcoming months so you can have
multiple options of doing such courses.”
Additionally Tandon believes there is one additional benefit, he
says, “These courses don’t cost much and thus are a major value-add for those
who can’t afford to take up regular courses.”
A word of Advice
Telang of Marico suggests that one
should select content that is targeted and meaningful. He says, “Choose a
course with videos, scenarios, case studies, and other application- focused
learning activities. Most important part is to apply MOOCs experience to solve
a practical challenge in work environment.” It is important to recognise that
each one of us has a distinct learning style, being aware of it and choosing
the right course and media goes a long way in building the capability.
Kapoor of Mettl
advises, “If your focus is employability, then it makes a lot more sense to
pick courses that compliment your portfolio and help you gain skills needed for
your dream job.”
“Test yourself
on the problems. Data is showing that
learners in MITx on edX courses spend far more time and effort working on
problems than using any other kind of resource provided by the course,” says Chuang.
This is the submission draft. The actual story had appeared in August issue of Money Today. You can read the final version (which includes experience of individuals). Click here or copy paste the given below link - http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/free-online-courses-mooc-harvard-mit-bits-pilani/1/208508.html
