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16 février 2013

How open courses are changing the modern university

online_education_448x200By Anita Singh and Howard Adelman. Traditional universities will have to respond to new challenges. In June 2012, University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan was unceremoniously fired. According to university board members, Sullivan's inadequate response to initiatives underway in MIT, Stanford and Harvard to online education prompted the drastic action. While her reinstatement was instigated by protesting students, administrators and faculty, and "(S)oon after her reinstatement, the university announced a partnership with Coursera, a for-profit online initiative."
University presidents fired for not being sufficiently dynamic in initiating online education! What is happening? Does such an event portend a vast shift from bricks-and-mortar to the online realm? Ira Basen, in a recent CBC special, pointed out that the current postsecondary structure is too expensive, too restrictive, and too inaccessible for the needs of the contemporary world and its potential students. Recent decisions of high-profile universities to offer online classes through Coursera or Harvard and MIT’s OpenCourse project, customarily with recognition for completion but not accreditation, are replies to that critique. The response has been overwhelming. In a little more than a year, massive open online courses (also known as MOOCs) have been accessed by over 100 million people. Read more...
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