MOOCs in India: A (giant) untapped audience


Over the past few weeks, we have been exploring the roles—real and potential—of massive open online courses (MOOCs) in improving higher education around the world.

india-mooc

As the country that is home to the second largest audience for MOOCs (after the United States), India provides an excellent example of both the opportunities and challenges the courses face globally.

With only about 12 percent of its college-aged population enrolling in higher education and a large percentage of its schools rated below average, India needs a better system for higher education.

In an article for the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Advanced Study of India, Gayle Christensen and Brandon Alcorn, who recently studied the student population of 32 Coursera MOOCs, discuss the potential advantages and obstacles to adopting MOOCs as a possible solution.

Indian students currently comprise about 10 percent of students enrolled in Coursera’s courses. Most of these students are young, male, and educated and live in urban areas.

This profile is consistent with that of MOOC students overall—by and large, they tend to be well educated, with about 80 percent already holding at least a bachelor’s degree.

As critics have pointed out, this is not the target audience many imagined for MOOCs: the courses were meant make education available to everyone, not just already-privileged students. In their article, Christensen and Alcorn describe three things that need to happen for MOOCs to democratize education in India.

Technology: First, the technological infrastructure needs to be developed to provide better Internet access for the country’s population. This can happen through both efforts toward worldwide connectivity and increased support of mobile technologies.

As I described in a post last week, organizations are working to accomplish both of these goals, in India and elsewhere.

Diversification: Second, MOOC providers need to consider the educational needs in various countries and provide diverse options to meet them. Christensen and Alcorn note that students around the world may not be prepared to take most MOOCs, which are academically very challenging. In India, the demand for pre-university and technical certification courses outweighs that for traditional university courses like those offered by Coursera.

Investment. Finally, MOOC providers need to make an investment in India by partnering with local institutions to create courses that are relevant and accessible to the Indian population. This idea was echoed recently in a statement on transnational education by Kerala’s former education minister Mohammed Basheer.

As Indian policy makers gathered to discuss the pros and cons of using MOOCs to improve higher education in Kerala, Basheer emphasized the importance of transnational companies working along with local teachers and universities. He said: “It’s not just the question of internationalization of education.

In this era of globalization, we should also think about the localization of global experiences.” In other words, it’s not just about bringing western-style higher education to the world, but rather about partnerships between local and global forces.

In many ways, India is a perfect proving ground for MOOCs: there is high demand for quality education, the population is generally quick to adopt new technologies, Indian students are flocking to MOOCs, and there is already some political buy-in.

But to meet the needs of everyone in this market, not just the elites, MOOC providers will need to change their tactics. The stage is set and the higher education world will be watching.

David Blake is the co-founder of Degreed. This post originally appeared on MOOCs.com.

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