How Online Education Has Turned Into a Game of Comparing Apples to Oranges - MOOC's

By Lauren Landry. “Comparing massively open online courses to degree-granting online programs is like comparing apples to oranges.”
That comment has found its way into my inbox one too many times. The problem, however, is that while I know there’s a distinction between the two, not everyone else does, as we continue to collectively lump every form of online education together into this one, scary “traditional learning will be lost forever” category. Yet, online education isn’t anything new. In 1976, professor-turned-entrepreneur John Sperling started planting the seeds of what’s now the country’s largest private university, the University of Phoenix. The school offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs at more than 200 locations, and has an online presence that’s hard to ignore. Over the last 30 years, more and more schools have found themselves online. Southern New Hampshire University has even been recognized as one of “The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies.” Fast Company says SNHU has reinvented higher ed, both online and off, and additional schools are now trying to adapt, mostly so they don’t lag behind.
Somewhere in the middle, ed tech startups, like 2tor, have latched on to schools who are, indeed, looking to get ahead. What 2tor does is partner with universities to build, administer and market online degree programs. Yet, how did 2tor decide to differentiate itself from, say, the University of Phoenix? The company chose to incorporate a personal element, bringing the professor face-to-face with his or her students. The classroom went from this place where the professor was standing front-and-center doling out lectures to something flipped, where students were working more collaboratively. And then, the classroom “fell apart.”
Enter in MIT OpenCourseWare — what started the wave. On April 4, 2001, former president of MIT Charles Vest officially introduced the concept. In a press conference, he called OCW innovative, saying:

It expresses our belief in the way that education can be advanced by constantly widening access to knowledge and information, and by inspiring others to participate. Simply put, OpenCourseWare is a natural marriage of American higher education and the capabilities of the World Wide Web.

Over the past 10 years, the Institute’s OCW program has grown from 50 published courses to over 2,000, offering free access to notes, exams and videos. There are no degrees involved, however. MIT’s point has been more to broaden education’s scope. Students from Nigeria, Mexico, Ghana, Zambia and other places where higher education  isn’t readily available nor necessarily emphasized, are now able to better themselves. And other platforms have tried to emphasize the same element.
We’ve given you a list of eight online platforms to help you further your education for free. There’s Khan Academy, Coursera and Udacity. Yet, here’s where all the credential issues come in — the “apples to oranges,” if you will.
When we ask whether or not employers will ever take online learning seriously, or talk about the downside of online education, we’re largely referencing massively open online courses (MOOCs). A diploma from Boston University looks no different whether you received it online or on-campus. What does look different, however, is an online diploma from Boston University and a slew of classes from edX and Udemy. You might be learning from “the world’s top instructors” for free, but the world’s top employers still need to run you through some sort of assessment before they can believe you’re actually a qualified candidate for the position they’re looking to fill.
Now, here’s where companies like Smarterer could help, but we haven’t reached that point yet. So, before everyone starts singing the praises of online education — or, more specifically, start saying online education’s going to replace anything — let’s all be clear we’ve got a lot of different kinds of “online education” going on out there. We’ve got accredited and non-accredited. Or, really, fact and, dare I say, fiction.
So, yes, let’s stop comparing “apples to oranges.” Let’s just saying, the face of education is changing and here, in Boston, it’s only gaining more momentum.