But while Coursera and others hold out the promise of bringing higher education to the masses and leveling the playing field between rich schools and those with fewer resources, some ask whether these platforms have rigorous enough curriculum standards. They question whether the credentials issued for course completion are meaningful in the job market. There is also skepticism around the sustainability of their business models since, for now at least, the classes offered by these platforms are free.
‘It’s a Facebook world’
Over the years, many schools have attempted online education. Fathom, Columbia University’s for-profit online learning venture, shut down in 2003 just a few years after its launch. AllLearn, a similar effort backed by Yale, Princeton and Stanford, was founded in 2000 and closed in 2006.
Why might Coursera or another of the new enterprises succeed where others have failed? For one, the technology has evolved. Video and audio are crisper. Desktop sharing tools and discussion boards are easier to navigate. There is greater access to Internet libraries. Course developers also have a more nuanced understanding of how people learn online and the best ways to present information in that format. Coursera, for example, slices lectures into digestible 10- or 15-minute segments and provides online quizzes as part of each section. Professors answer questions from students in online forums. This is a vast improvement from previous online education ventures that offered a less dynamic learning model where students watched canned lectures, with no interaction.
Second, the barriers to entry for students are lower. Taking an online class today doesn’t require much technological know-how. Even if it did, the population of potential online learners has a greater comfort level with technology even compared to five years ago. Members of Generation Y are digital natives and famously tech savvy. They already use technology and online tools for collaboration, communication and research. Baby boomers are not far behind. In 2008, only 11% of those aged 50-64 used social media. Today, 52% of that age group uses social media, according to the Pew Research Centre.
Advanced technology and society’s apparent ease with it make the “sage on the stage” model of collegiate learning seem old-fashioned – quaint even. “Fundamentally, the way most faculty members teach at most universities is the same way that college students have been taught for the past 100 years,” says Werbach. “This is despite all the technological advancements that have taken place. There’s a growing recognition that the workplace of today doesn’t look like it did in 1940 or 1970, yet the classroom has changed very little since then…. It seems impossible to suggest that the dramatic changes in the way people interact with each other and with technology will have no impact on the way they learn.”
