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"In 50 years", he says, there will be only 10 institutions in the world delivering higher education and Udacity has a shot at being one of them.” – Sebastian Thrun, Udacity CEO, March 2012.
Imagine this: You are on a summer vacation in Bali. You find yourself in a hammock that provides a full-frontal view of the Indian Ocean, and you sit down comfortably in utter bliss. You thought you must use this vacation as a well-deserved respite from your tough and demanding 9-5 job. I mean, you deserved it! You also thought, being the knowledge seeker you are, to use this opportunity to learn something different, something that you wouldn’t have time to do back in the real world, whether it is learning how to build an app, gain some insights into powerful machine learning algorithms, or take part in lectures given by famous Nobel laureates simply for the sake of it. Now all you need is a laptop and a stable internet connection and bam! You are vacationing, relaxing and stimulating your mind simultaneously! This is indeed the dream that many of us hope to live. Indeed, it has become increasingly accessible for people to learn about things that interest them anytime, anywhere. Thanks to Massive Online Open Courses, or “MOOCs”, you can do just that. Whether it is on a hammock in Bali, or simply in your dorm room. In this post, I will talk about why and how MOOCs are increasingly popular, along with their downsides and my personal experience.
The Surge
The growing popularity of video-based learning has led to a surge in MOOCs. While I will talk about the advantages of video-based learning in a separate post, MOOCS are becoming popular day-by -day. The paradigm of MOOCS to provide accessible learning to a wide range of students is gaining acceptance. So why are they so popular now? Well it boils down to the following main reasons: Increasing bandwidth; Increasing value of education; High value for money; Fantastic and easily rateable content.
Increasing bandwidth;
The growth in the popularity of MOOCs is not a recent phenomenon. In fact, MOOC platforms such as DigitalThink, NinthHouse, etc. did exist in the early 2000’s. But bandwidth was the key issue that prohibited the success of these platforms. As technology becomes more sophisticated and reliable, this provides a more stable basis for MOOCs to thrive. Increased bandwidth means increased transfer of data which allows for more users to access content through a stable internet connection. Thus, stable Internet -> Better platform for MOOCs to succeed.
Increasing value for education:
The importance of education is indeed not surprising. In a world that is experiencing unprecedented technological change at a deadly pace, most of us need to keep up. It’s adapt or die. The popularity of MOOCS is an indication that people are recognising the need to learn. Nowadays, it is common to see someone from a completely different field learning about something else. I see marketing professionals learning more about software development. Software engineers are learning more about Data Science and etc. The more you know, the higher your chances of getting hired. That’s how it is. Thanks to MOOCs transitioning to one field from another is longer a cumbersome and expensive process.
High value for money
Nowadays, most courses of MOOCs are cheaper and provide more value for less money. Accessibility to high quality content for virtually no price is a jackpot for most students. If I told a finance enthusiast from the 80’s that you can take part in a financial markets course from an ivy league university anytime and anywhere by a Nobel laureate, and for free, he/she wouldn’t believe it! (In case you are wondering, I am referring to the Financial Markets course taught by Prof. Robert Schiller from Yale University, freely available on Coursera). Access to excellent content for free is no longer a myth, but a reality, which brings me to my next point.
Fantastic Content;
The quality of content available on MOOCs is indeed truly amazing. Now, I am not saying every available online course is pure gold, but some courses are indeed truly of high calibre. Whether it’s Robert Schiller’s Financial Markets Course from Yale University, or Andrew Ng’s Machine Learning Course by Stanford, the quality of content is certainly of high standard. You don’t need to pay 50000 dollars for college courses that were previously highly inaccessible. Nowadays, you can find online courses provided by top universities with the same level of quality, if not better! The variety of courses available is also impressive. Take Udemy for example, where you can find categories of courses ranging from Software development to Architectural Design to Health & Fitness! The sheer variety of courses has paved the way for MOOCs to gain a foothold in our learning experience.
The other side of the coin:
The flexibility that MOOCs provide us with is indeed a blessing but also a curse. You truly need a strong incentive to finish the course from scratch. Without the pressure and commitment of paying a large fee for a course at college, some students are more likely to abandon and drop a MOOC if work or other commitments get in the way. In fact, among all MOOC participants, 3.13 percent completed their courses in 2017-18, down from about 4 percent the two previous years and nearly 6 percent in 2014-15. And among the "verified" students, 46 percent completed in 2017-18, compared to 56 percent in 2016-17 and about 50 percent the two previous years. This is indeed a problem for providers since a lot of time and investment goes into completing these courses. I would lie if I told you that I have completed every online course I have participated in. Out of the 38 hours of the Robert Schiller course I repeatedly referred to, my competition rate stands at a merger 47%.
The lack of face-to-face interaction doesn’t help either. I for one, prefer direct interaction with the professor and my classmates. It creates a mutual synergy that is hard to translate in an online course. In an online course with thousands of students, it is hard to interact with others and gain the same quality of feedback from your peers if you were in a traditional classroom. It is also unlikely that you’ll get graded papers and assignments directly from your lecturer.
Many MOOCs have auto grading features for assignments and multiple-choice quizzes instead. Finally, it’s not always free. From the majority of MOOCs you can study all the course content for free, but if you would like a certificate of achievement at the end of the course, there is usually a fee. It can range from $50 to $300.
In a nutshell
To sum up, the rising popularity of MOOCs can be based on a variety of factors, including increasing bandwidth, increasing value of education, increasing value for money and high quality and quantity of content available to learn. However, the lack of face-to-face interaction, the lack of pressure from traditional courses along with the lack of collaboration and lower chances to stand out are some of the (many) factors that prohibit MOOCs from becoming the mainstream source of education today. I don’t know whether the CEO of Udacity is right and that in 50 years MOOCs will be the main source of education or not, but as of 2020, while their popularity keeps rising, they are still not in the position to completely substitute a traditional college degree. The position they are suitable for though, is to provide an excellent complementary solution to your traditional courses, catering a path for a more well-rounded learning experience.
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