Online learning jumps to next level

The New York Times 09 September 2012

As millions of students have flocked to free ‘massive open online courses’ or MOOCs in recent months, higher education experts have focused on two big questions: whether universities will begin to offer credit for such courses, and what might be done to prevent cheating. On Thursday, the first glimmers of answers began to emerge, writes Tamar Lewin for The New York Times.

Colorado State University’s Global Campus said it would give three transfer credits to students who complete “Introduction to Computer Science: Building a search engine”, a free course offered by Udacity, and take a proctored test. While the Global Campus is apparently the first American institution to offer credit for a Udacity MOOC, several European universities have already done so.

Also on Thursday, edX, the Harvard-MIT online collaboration, announced that students in its MOOCs would be able to take proctored final exams at Pearson VUE’s brick-and-mortar testing centres around the world, where their identity can be verified. “This will take online learning to the next level,” said Anant Agarwal, the president of edX.
Full report on The New York Times site

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