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Imagine attending lectures from Ivy League colleges right from the comfort of your home. It’s not as impossible as it sounds. The new face of distance education has websites collaborating with some of the world’s top universities, offering access to quality education in the form of online courses that are open to all, and for free!
MOOCs have become the second most popular thing to do during college semester breaks, internships being the most in demand. Statistics prove this too, with Coursera, one of the leading MOOC platforms, notching 2.8 million registered learners (at the end of March 2013), of which 8.8 per cent were Indians. “I took up history of rock music offered by Coursera after hearing about it from a friend who also happened to be a fellow rock music enthusiast. It was a unique course! I learnt a lot about how rock music evolved. It was also a useful way to spend time,” said Shirsho Dasgupta, a second-year student of Jadavpur University.
What is MOOC?
Stands for Massive Open Online Course.
The courses are available on the Internet and are free of cost, apart from a few specific ones.
It is aimed at large-scale participation via web-based platforms.
What is needed to sign up for a course?
An internet connection.
Texts suggested by the course, most of which can be found online.
Self-motivation, to help you complete the course.
How are assessments done?
Assessments are conducted online, either in the form of machine-graded, multiple-choice quizzes or peer-graded writing assignments.
MOOC platforms
Coursera:
Offers courses in engineering, humanities, medicine, biology, mathematics and statistics, business, social sciences, law and computer science. University partners include Princeton University, Stanford University, Wellesley College, Berklee College of Music, Georgia Institute of Technology, Yale University and University of Pennsylvania, among others. Trinankur Banerjee, a 2013 electronics and telecommunication graduate from Jadavpur University, was so impressed with one of Coursera’s courses on films that he enrolled in the film studies Masters course of JU, and even topped the entrance examination. “The wide range of topics covered in the lectures was remarkable. Honestly, the course kindled my interest in film editing,” said Trinankur.
Udacity: Offers courses in business, computer science, design, mathematics and science. Courses also have difficulty ratings — beginner, intermediate and advanced. Udacity also boasts of the first-ever entirely MOOC-based Masters degree in computer science from Georgia Institute of Technology. However, this is a paid course and costs around $7,000.
edX: Offers courses in biology and life sciences, business and management, chemistry, computer science, economics and finance, electronics, energy and earth sciences, engineering, ethics, law, literature, medicine, statistics, humanities, social sciences, food and nutrition among others. Some of the big names offering courses at edX include Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Cornell University, Boston University, Rice University and Wellesley College. IIT Bombay is the only Indian university involved with edX.
Udemy: Offers courses covering subjects like art and photography, music, humanities, sports, crafts and hobbies, design, maths and science, education, languages.... Udemy has both free and paid courses and some of the courses are really quirky like aquaponic gardening,which combines conventional aquaculture with hydroponics (which is cultivating plants in water in a symbiotic environment), pastry arts (which teaches not just pastry making but also decorating and presentation), a course on Salsa dancing and on training your puppy!
UC Berkeley OpenCourseWare: Offers a range of courses in the form of video lectures, covering a wide range of subjects like anthropology, African-American studies, electrical engineering, astronomy, journalism, religious studies and statistics. Since lectures are posted shortly after they are given, it is smart to start from the beginning of the semester. UC Berkeley’s OpenCourseWare webcasts can be found on three addresses — Webcast.berkeley, Berkeley on YouTube, and Berkeley on iTunes University.
Open Yale Courses: OYC provides select Yale courses on a range of subjects from financial theory to Roman architecture. The courses are available in high definition video and audio formats and are self-paced. All you need to do is download the videos and watch at a convenient time.
Stanford Engineering Everywhere: SEE offers 10 courses from Stanford School of Engineering. Course content includes instructional videos and study material, free of cost.
saylor.org: The areas of study at saylor.org includes regular ones like art history, mathematics, philosophy, psychology and off-beat ones like workplace skills and real world math. After completion of a course, one can take a two-hour final exam that has a passing score of 70 per cent.
The American Center recently hosted a MOOC session on “Entrepreneurship 101: Know Your Customer” with online lectures from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The content for the six-week course was provided by MIT, for free. Apart from the lectures, the course also had entrepreneurs interacting with the participants and sharing their experiences through video conferences that added a practical side to business and entrepreneurship. The programme was a part of the department of state initiative to highlight freely-available MOOCs.
The course saw registration from not just college students but also entrepreneurs and school students.“This is one of the most popular programmes that we have done at the American Center. I think people loved the idea of taking a course from MIT, one of the most renowned educational institutions in the world, but from your own home,” said Akash Suri, vice-consul of US Consulate General in Calcutta.
The panel had Peter Pudaite, founder of Sure Taxis, who spoke on how he started the business, the kind of service they provide and how they earn money out of it. Other speakers included Sarah Lance of Sari Bari, Christophe Plais of Terra Indica, Iftekhar Ahsan of Calcutta Walks. A video chat with Akshay Kothari, one of the developers of the app Pulse that LinkedIn acquired for $90 million, was also a part of the line-up.
American Center plans to organise more such MOOCs in the coming months.
Shweta Keshri
I have been doing MOOCs for the last three-four years. I have done courses by Coursera, Stanford, Harvard, edX and Udacity. If someone wants to study abroad, they need a brand in their resume. If we have these things on our resume, they’ll know that we are eager to learn and that helps. You also get to learn from the professors of the world’s top universities,” said Aninda Mukhopadhyay, a fourth-year student of Techno India.
This is my first MOOC. It gave me a good idea about starting a business. The best thing was that it gave us real-life experiences. I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur. Flying planes is just my passion,” said Anirban Mukherjee, a pilot.
Disha Raychaudhuri
Have you signed up for a MOOC? Tell us about your experience at t2@abp.in
