When Massive Open Online Courses entered the education market through platforms like Coursera, no university in US was enthusiastic about providing college credits in exchange for these free online courses. But, the current economy has turned things around.
Antioch University, a private university which has five campuses in four states has become the first university to offer college credits for pre-specified Coursera courses in an attempt to reduce the student costs to complete a four-year degree.
Coursera, a company that offers free online courses by top universities across the globe like Penn, Stanford, Brown and 30 others, was founded by two Stanford professors, Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller. The platform has approved the university to offer college credits through its courses.
Through this new partnership, Antioch University and the Antioch University Los Angeles campus will offer students, who enroll in university's BA program and high school-to-college bridge programs, an affordable and more convenient pathway to earn a college degree.
Antioch University-LA launched a pilot program in early October, where students could enroll in two Coursera courses developed by the University of Pennsylvania: Modern and Contemporary American Poetry, and Greek and Roman Mythology.
AULA plans to offer three additional courses in January and is working with Coursera to secure approval to launch an expanded program nationwide in 2013.
Each Coursera course will be facilitated by an AULA faculty member who will also be enrolled in the course, thereby enabling both frequent interaction between students and instructor and augmentation of the course through supplemental exercises and projects focused on expanding the learning experience.
Some courses will be offered in a low residency format so that those students who wish to participate in a face-to-face class may do so.
In order to ensure student success in the online course, AULA also intends to schedule a series of free workshops, on campus and online, beginning in late Fall. These workshops will be designed to educate students and community members on how to earn academic credit through a MOOC enrollment.
The prospect of offering college credits through online courses is finally catching up among universities like Atioch which is well known for its MFA creative writing program across the nation. But, the question is whether offering credits through online courses will help curb high student debt rates while maintaining the expected optimal standard of quality of education. Incidentally, one needs to wait patiently to find the answer to that million dollar question.
