What do MOOCs mean for internationalisation?

Published 12/07/2013

Just as it’s hard imagine what life was like before the internet, after 2012’s breakout year for Coursera, Edx and Udacity among others, it’s hard to speak about higher education without mention of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Despite conflicting discourse from both critics and supporters of the platform, most of the industry agrees that it’s too early to tell exactly how MOOCs will affect the landscape of higher education, and if they will ever be profitable.

But the sector has indeed been forever changed, with big name US universities (predominantly) such as Harvard, MIT and Stanford joining the bandwagon and making some of their courses accessible for free via a MOOC platform. University courses are now available to anyone with an internet connection—so how might this change international education?

Profiles of the MOOC student

The data around MOOCs remains incomplete but figures so far show that about 80% of students participating already have a college degree and the dropout rate hovers around 90%. The New York Times declared 2012 the year of the MOOC, but their impact is being guessed at, with investment into MOOCs adding to the fervour about an “online game-changer” in education.

The New York Times declared 2012 the year of the MOOC, but their impact is being guessed at

The most complete research on MOOCs to date was recently released by the University of Edinburgh after it delivered the first round of its six-course MOOC offering. A pre-launch survey sent to 217,512 email accounts a week before the course began yielded 45,182 responses (a hit rate of 21%) and revealed that some 200 countries were represented in the first cohort, the majority of students coming from the US, UK, Spain and Brazil. Thirty-three per cent of respondents were between 25 and 35 years old and were mostly in the “teaching and education” field or students at university. 70% said they had completed a degree course.

The data supports four participant profiles identified by Ronaldo Mota, visiting professorial fellow at the Institute of Education of the University of London (and former Interim Minister at the Brazilian Ministry of Education). The first covers traditional students taking a MOOC for credit on a degree course. Then there are “job-seekers”, who will pay for a certificate proving completion in order to improve employment prospects (but this in itself is a hot potato – the MOOC model currently relies on peer-assessment, although institutions are starting to look at the the possibility of official certification, too).

The the third type is the student-at-leisure, who will participate and complete the course out of interest. Finally, there are the most common of all MOOC students, those simply intrigued by the idea who will sign up out of curiosity, not follow the course material closely, and likely drop out.

Understanding and catering to these diverse student profiles will be integral to universities’ success,  Mota told The PIE.. “MOOCs should be directed to students regularly by one institution and even to those who do it just for curiosity. The secret is to try to build a synergy between the very diverse profiles.”

Offering credit along with MOOC completion has not caught on and remains at the centre of the debate among educators, although earlier this year the American Council on Education recommended five courses on the Coursera platform for accreditation. Still, none of the universities providing the courses have confirmed whether they will award credit or not.

“Joining consortia is a rational way for universities to share the cost and reputational risk of online provisions”

What is in it for universities?

There is an element of the bandwagon about the hype surrounding MOOCs with universities worried about missing the boat. All are aware that a presence in this space – whatever the student demographic – carries inherent brand name awareness. The other point is that with the evolution of tech platforms like MIT and Harvard’s Edx hosting MOOCs, it is a relatively low-stakes game for institutions. “Joining consortia is a rational way for universities to share the cost and reputational risk of online provisions,” wrote William Lawton and Alex Katsomitros of the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education in a recent report on the subject.

There are costs, of course, but the real revolution is in how funding for access to education is raised through the model, they say. “The modus operandi of the traditional [higher education] sector is taking a lot of money from a controlled number of students. With MOOCs it is charging hundreds of thousands of students a minimum fee.”

If universities have yet to benefit from MOOCs financially, platform provider Coursera, launched by two Stanford University computer science professors in April 2012, has shown its profit potential. It recently raised US$43 million (on top of US$22 million last year) from private investors to double its employee base to about 100, extend its mobile apps and enable students to be charged for completion certificates.

What’s the international reach of MOOCs? [More>>]

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