Laptop lectures, coming to an armchair near you
Leading British universities will soon offer many of their courses online and free of charge
Seventeen universities are to give away some of their course content online (Onoky/Photononstop)Soon some students will be able to do just that, as will anybody with a computer and internet connection, as a number of Russell Group universities prepare to make some of their courses available online. Not only will these offer greater flexibility to online learners around the world, they will also be free.
“The revolution is under way,” declared Simon Nelson, chief executive of Futurelearn, the new UK online educational platform, backed by the Open University, which is due to be launched this autumn. The service will provide online space in which its partner institutions — universities including King’s College London, Bristol and St Andrews, as well as cultural behemoths such as the British Library — can upload the degree modules.
An online higher education course is known as a “mooc” — a “massive open online course”. Moocs mirror traditional on-campus degree courses in their format, but with vital components, such as lectures and tutorials, transposed from live events to pre-recorded videos on the internet that can be viewed anywhere. Like modules for traditional university courses, moocs are typically between 6 and 10 weeks long.
Nelson is confident that Futurelearn will attract “tens of thousands” of students. If free American online education portals are anything to go by, his estimate is likely to prove correct. Online learners have flocked to study moocs from Ivy League universities, such as Harvard.
EdX, an online learning platform founded by Harvard, Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has already attracted 800,000 students from 192 countries since it started in autumn 2012.
The uptake is impressive given the level of difficulty of many of the courses. Anant Agarwal, an MIT professor and president of edX, explained: “EdX prides itself on courses that we expect to display rigour. So we have courses at the third-year undergraduate level.”
While virtual platforms such as edX cannot mirror the social learning aspect of campus life, Agarwal said that discussion between mooc students was promoted: “There’s a community of learners — students discuss courses and content on our platform.”
Significantly, the platform has developed an examination process, which means that online learners can graduate from an edX course with a certificate and a grade. After completing a course, a student can take either an online test, which is based on an honesty system, or an exam invigilated by a proctor at a local testing centre, wherever they are in the world.
Agarwal said: “The certificate is a huge motivator.” Some universities around the world have even started to accept graded edX certificates as credits towards the undergraduate degrees they offer.
Like edX, Futurelearn plans to provide certificates for completed courses. Nelson hinted that some British universities might begin to allow students to substitute Futurelearn courses for their campus courses. The price of gaining a certificate at edX is about £60 and Nelson confirmed that Futurelearn certificates would be similarly priced: “We’re talking tens of pounds.”
EdX courses have boosted the chances of some applicants in their attempts to gain admission to leading American universities. Amol Bhave, 17, a secondary-school pupil who lives in the central Indian city of Jabalpur, found out last month that he had won a scholarship to MIT on the basis of near-perfect marks in edX exams.
