Uncertainties surrounding the Massive Open Online Courses' (MOOC's) future may not have been successfully addressed yet, but that has not discouraged the nation's reputed universities joining online platforms such as Coursera and edX.
Wellesley College, the latest in the list, announced Tuesday that it would be partnering with edX in providing online courses, thereby becoming the first liberal arts college to join the joint venture of Harvard and MIT. With this new move, it has also become the first women's college to offer MOOCs.
"I am pleased that Wellesley will bring a much-needed liberal arts perspective to the rapidly developing online learning environment," Wellesley College President Kim Bottomly said in a statement to the Wellesley Community.
According to President Bottomly, the College will approach WellesleyX as an experiment.
"What we learn over the next few years has the potential to help us advance undergraduate education."
WellesleyX will initially offer four courses, which are yet to be determined, beginning in the fall of 2013. These courses will be hosted on edX's online platform. According to the college's website, courses will more likely to be free of cost.
In a Boston Globe article announcing Wellesley's participation in the collaboration, Anant Agarwal, president of edX and a professor at MIT, said the addition of Wellesley College continues the group's forays into new territory.
Agarwal said Wellesley College will extend the group's offerings in the humanities and will provide a case study in how to preserve the small-class culture on a large scale.
In a Huffington Post Blog, President Bottomly went on to elaborate on her change of heart. As confessed, she was initially skeptical about the idea of providing education online.
She said she sees 'online education as better suited to training than to educating.' But later she came around seeing the WellesleyX as an opportunity 'for a faculty known for innovation in the classroom to continue to experiment with the use of new technologies that have the potential to bring even more excitement to learning, and to enhance and enliven the classroom experience.'
She said she hopes that women from restrictive societies who cannot step out from the house will be benefitted from WellesleyX.
