Universities have so far struggled with finding a cheap but viable way to offer accredited MOOCs.
Last year, Colorado State University-Global Campus began offering credit for a computer science MOOC. A year later, no students have taken advantage of the deeply discounted course. San Jose State University in May announced that their partnership with Udacity to offer for-credit MOOCs was being “paused” after many students had trouble passing the courses.
Schroeder said that awareness remains an obstacle for even those universities willing to cut the cost of an accredited online course. Students may be willing to pay for “free” courses now, but the reality is that these users are just a fraction of a small segment of students who even know that the courses exist.
“Students really don’t know about MOOCs,” Schroeder said. “Those of us in this field talk about MOOCs every day, but students are not broadly aware of them. While there has been some general national coverage, they don’t really know all of this is going on.”
Of course, building awareness is even more difficult when a large amount of educators are not fans of MOOCs to begin with, no matter if they come with college credit.
Michael Horn, the co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, said that the trajectory MOOC platforms like Coursera are taking could be at odds with the goals of many major research universities.
- What does higher-ed look like in 2023? - January 5, 2015
- Are ed-tech startups a bubble that’s ready to burst? - January 1, 2015
- Are MOOCs really dead? - August 28, 2014
Comments are closed.