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MIT Will Offer Certificates to Outside Students Who Take Its Online
Courses
By Marc Parry
Millions of learners have enjoyed the free lecture videos and
other course materials published online through the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology's OpenCourseWare project. Now MIT plans to release a fresh batch of
open online courses-and, for the first time, to offer certificates to outside
students who complete them.
The credentials are part of a new, interactive e-learning venture,
tentatively called MITx, that is expected to host "a virtual community of
millions of learners around the world," the institute will announce on
Monday.
Here's how it will work: MITx will give anyone free access to an
online-course platform. Users will include students on the MIT campus, but also
external learners like high-school seniors and engineering majors at other
colleges. They'll watch videos, answer questions, practice exercises, visit
online labs, and take quizzes and tests. They'll also connect with others
working on the material.
The first course will begin around the spring of 2012. MIT has not yet
announced its subject, but the goal is to build a portfolio of high-demand
courses-the kind that draw more than 200 people to lecture halls on the campus,
in Cambridge, Mass. MIT is investing "millions of dollars" in the project, said
L. Rafael Reif, the provost, and the plan is to solicit more from donors and
foundations.
Ten years ago, MIT galvanized the open-education movement by giving
away free learning materials from 2,100 courses. But some universities are
moving beyond publishing online syllabi and simple videos. They now provide
virtual tutors and automated feedback through interactive projects like the Open
Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University and the free online
computer-science courses at Stanford University. MIT's new venture is a step in
that direction.
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SIDEBAR: If Stanford's experience is any indication, the potential
pool of participants could be vast. Back in November, roughly 94,000 students
enrolled in Andrew Ng's open course on machine learning there.
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MIT's project could also help answer a big question facing open
education: How do you sustain projects whose content is free?
Although access to MITx courses will carry no cost, the institute plans
to charge a "modest" fee for certificates that indicate a learner has mastered
the content. It's unclear exactly how the assessment will work.
What is clear is that any credentials "would not be issued under the
name MIT," according to an MITx fact sheet. "Rather, MIT plans to create a
not-for-profit body within the institute that will offer certification for
online learners of MIT course work," the sheet says. "That body will carry a
distinct name to avoid confusion."
Mr. Reif stressed that the open-learning experiment "is not an easier
version of MIT."
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SIDEBAR: "For them to earn a credential, they have to
demonstrate mastery of the subject," he said, "just like an MIT student
does."
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A 3-Tiered Ecosystem
Monday's announcement marks a shift for MIT. The institute does not
offer a fully online education for conventional credits. And when the
OpenCourseWare idea emerged, the thinking was to avoid credit-bearing courses so
as not to "dilute the MIT brand," according to one official quoted in
Unlocking the Gates, a book about open learning by Taylor Walsh of Ithaka
S+R, a nonprofit group that promotes the use of technology in higher
education.
But the new venture will apparently create a three-tiered ecosystem, with
traditional MIT degrees, for residential students; cheaper MITx certificates,
and free OpenCourseWare materials, said Roger C. Schonfeld, Ithaka's director of
research.
"It seems like an effort to begin to expand the breadth of individuals
who can claim an educational association with MIT," he said.
The project aims to "lower the existing barriers between residential
campuses and millions of learners around the world," MIT says. But how much will
outside individuals get to interact with MIT professors? That's unclear.
One way to promote such contact will be software that handles many
questions, said Anant Agarwal, director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory.
"Through voting and other mechanisms, you can create a funnel of
requests so that the requests that come off the funnel at the very top can
actually be answered by MIT professors and MIT TA's," he said. "A large number
of questions at the lower parts of the funnel can actually be answered by other
learners who may be slightly ahead."
MIT faculty members have also developed technology that can
automatically grade essays. Other technologies that could come into play here
include automatic transcription, online tutors, and crowdsourced grading.
The core idea of OpenCourseWare-free online content-spread far beyond
MIT. The institute hopes this project will also catch on elsewhere. To help make
that happen, it will release the MITx open-learning software at no charge, so
other educational institutions can adopt it.
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--
Jerry P. Becker
Dept. of Curriculum & Instruction
Southern
Illinois University
625 Wham Drive
Mail Code 4610
Carbondale, IL
62901-4610
Phone: (618) 453-4241
[O]
(618)
457-8903 [H]
Fax: (618)
453-4244
E-mail:
jbecker@siu.edu