Managing MOOC Credits

By Kristen Domonell. This week, the American Council on Education (ACE) announced a research effort examining the academic potential of massive open online courses (MOOCs), in which it will evaluate select Coursera courses for college credit. If the ACE College Credit Recommendation Service (ACE CREDIT) decides to recommend these courses for credit, it could mean an improvement in college affordability for hundreds of thousands of students. It will also raise some logistical questions for administrators at colleges and universities.
Although the decision to accept credits is ultimately up to an institution, the 2,000 institutions that currently accept the recommendations of ACE CREDIT will likely follow suit, says Jeffrey von Munkwitz-Smith, president of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers and assistant vice president and university registrar at Boston University. More...