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| Edited By: Jiby J Kattakayam |Source: DNA |Updated: Nov 02, 2016, 07:10 AM IST
Online courses have introduced revolutionary changes to the higher education landscape. Students, mid-career professionals and casual learners no longer need to enrol in traditional brick-and-mortar colleges or distance education centres to augment their skills, acquire specialisations or learn new subjects. With access to course material and streamed lectures by professors from top global universities and at a fraction of the cost of enrolling at campuses, online courses or MOOCs—Massive Open Online Courses as they are called—have become buzzwords with collegians and working professionals. Coursera, the market leader, the other main one being edX, has logged over 22 million registered learners taking courses, specialisations and degrees, of whom 1.7 million are from India. The country is integral to Coursera’s plans, considering it is the largest revenue market outside the United States and new registrations have been increasing 75 per cent year-on-year since 2014. Coursera’s chief business officer Nikhil Sinha talks to Jiby J Kattakayam on the future of MOOCs. Edited excerpts:
On the contrary, our 146 university partners are reporting incremental revenues. They are able to tap a global community of learners through MOOCs. Moreover, students who have taken the individual courses from these universities have then joined degree programmes on their campuses because they were impressed with the course material and lectures.
There are an increasing number of choices for learners to acquire skills and knowledge due to MOOCs. The onus is on such universities to raise the overall quality of their educational offerings, integrate MOOCs into their curriculum or forge tie-ups with global partners.
In 2015, nearly two lakh students were granted financial aid by us. We can work with governments, corporates or lenders to provide scholarships and financial aid to support students.
In the future, a whopping 100 million young people are going to access higher education in India and there is no way our traditional campuses can accommodate so many students. Governments have to motivate local institutions of higher learning to come online to meet this huge demand. Over time, I see the MOOCs market segregating into different price bands, a replication of the physical space where elite and private universities charge higher fees and public and lesser-known institutions price themselves in lower bands to attract students.
Not necessarily. We are already disrupting price points. Our 2-4 months specialisation courses cost just a fraction of what they would in the US and these are certified courses too. We also offer auditing of courses. And we have now launched full-fledged master’s and MBA degree courses by the University of Illinois. These cost just $20,000 while an MBA on their campus would cost over $120,000. Affordable high quality education will remain the USP of the MOOCs model.
The learning will get personalised through the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning tools. Right now, we have no way to evaluate whether a student is grasping the material during a lecture because individual learning capabilities are different. In the future, we can quiz students in real time and based on their responses, we can ascertain their comprehension ability, and where needed, direct them to foundational content or provide advanced material.
*Based on average daily enrolments over the past six months on Coursera.
