IITs, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant and Nasscom team up to provide free online courses.
The traditional approach is failing us. It’s time for a change
(A version of this post appeared August 12, 2013, on India Infoline)
The recent announcement of coming together of seven leading IITs, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant and NASSCOM to launch India’s first MOOC is indeed a welcome move. Enrollment in higher education, at less than 18% of the 120 million potential students, is well below the world average of 26%. Huge scale and relatively low cost online courses promise to significantly increase access to quality education.
Since the launch early last year, the MOOCs have multiplied in number, resources and student recruitment. Coursera has formed partnerships with 83 universities and colleges around the world, including many of America’s top-tier institutions. EdX, a non-profit MOOC provider founded by Harvard and MIT is now a consortium of 28 institutions, the most recent to join the bandwagon is the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. FutureLearn, a consortium of 21 British, one Irish and one Australian university along with other educational bodies will start offering MOOCs later this year.
While the appeal of online education is broad, the prospect seems especially suited to India.That’s not just because Internet access is gradually reaching villages, but also because quality teaching is not. School teachers are not well qualified or trained and those students who make it to college enter institutions where it’s normal to find a third of faculty positions unfilled. On the face of it, technology is a way to bypass some of the great weaknesses of India’s educational system.
However as an insider of open online learning space and an avid user of all MOOC platforms, I see some challenges on the road ahead. Lets examine them one at a time.
1. The biggest challenge is self-discipline; some people just cannot learn without a real frame or prescribed learning structure. This is evident from the very low completion rate faced by all leading MOOC platforms. This can be partially addressed by including some live sessions in the courses. Additionally finding a way to institutionalize the mentor network can also help a great deal.
2. We need to develop better understanding of what makes a good online course. Just sticking a camera in front of someone who has a captive audience won’t solve the problem. Most NPTEL videos are like semester-long classes, and they’re just a long time to sit in each. In this day and age, video games are much shorter and tweets are shorter than e-mails. Everything is becoming shorter and faster. To some extent MOOCs have to adjust to that.
3. Choice of the course being offered is another area where we need to have desired focus. While the idea of starting off with computer science courses is great; a lot of them already exist on popular, extensively funded and resourceful MOOCs. I don’t see why people would prefer a domestic version. On the other hand, according to the National Employability Report (NER) 2011, while India produces more than 500,000 engineers annually, only a minuscule 3.51 per cent are appropriately trained to be directly employed. It will serve better if we use this platform to address the burning issue by offering courses to fill the skills gaps or offer courses that directly connect graduates to high paying jobs.
4. Certification is crucial and a certification / joint certification from IIT is a great start. On the proctored exam front, a partnership with assessment companies like Promatric will go a long way in increasing access to these certifications. Webcam proctoring offered by ProctorU can offer a more scalable solution.
5. Engagement and group learning is an important aspect and is vital to enhance course completion certification. While Google course platform compares well with most of the popular MOOC platforms. NovoEd, the platform by a Stanford startup has addressed these issues better then any existing offering, making it an obvious better choice.
6. Last and most important, while it is great that leading institution, corporate bodies and industry association are coming together; it will be important to have a formal organization with it’s own team and own budget such as edX / FutureLearn in place. A consortium type of approach will not be ideal as it may not be able to provide the required leadership and direction.
Education will need to adapt to meet the needs of a changing society. Those needs include increased access to higher education. The number of jobs that require education beyond high school is expected to account for two-thirds of the job market by 2020. The solution is online; well mostly and in this context this initiative is extremely welcome.
“The skills gap is really an education gap, and it affects us all,” Gary J. Beach, publisher emeritus of CIO Magazine said in a New York Times BitsBlog interview last week. Traditional learning must be infused with the sort of parallel learning that adequately prepares students for life in the 21 Century—summarized in Beach’s 5C’s. Those of us at work in education technology can play a critical role. We take that seriously and so should all.
