Technapex Want College Credit for a MOOC? No Problem, Says Antioch University

Antioch University is now the first U.S. institution to offer college credit for certain Coursera MOOCs. This is big news for the desired direction that online higher education wishes to take; the chance to offer actual accreditation from taking in massive open online courses.

I’ve heard before of institutions offering courses online through Coursera or Udacity and then allowing tuition-paying students to receive credit, but this is the first time I’ve heard of a university accepting Coursera courses in the same manner one might transfer credit from a community college to a state college.

The move is especially designed to assist the needs of adult learners who may have had to forgo college degree completion in lieu of raising a family or pursuing a career. The MOOC is an opportunity for such individuals to develop an education, and now Antioch is offering real, no-BS course credit for it. Sounds like a great development.

Earlier this month, Antioch launched a MOOC pilot program which allowed students to enroll in two Coursera courses developed by the University of Pennsylvania. Antioch is interested in launching three additional courses starting next January, and an expanded nationwide program sometime in 2013.

In a press release on Antioch’s site, Tex Boggs, president of AULA said:

“Antioch University values and nurtures an innovative, reflective, and experiential approach to educational excellence and, to that end, we are excited about having this groundbreaking opportunity to work with Coursera to provide students with even greater benefits from the unique learning opportunity offered by the Coursera MOOCs. Coursera provides an unprecedented opportunity, for both nontraditional and traditional students, to access rigorous higher education courses at a time and place that is convenient to them. By working closely with Coursera and their university partners, Antioch University Los Angeles will offer to those who choose to enroll in Coursera MOOCs an opportunity to earn university credit at an affordable cost.”

Brent Hannify

JJ

Antioch is buying a pig in a poke. I’ve taken a Coursera offering and it was not up to the level of a college course; it was on a restricted topic, as would be appropriate for an upper-level colloquium, but the content was neither rigorous nor comprehensive, and the teaching was amateurish. So, Antioch, who writes the learning objectives? Who decides the number of credits for the course? How do your teachers decide that this course meets your prerequisites? And: in the case of the course I took, the lecturer had written a book on the subject, which I’ve read and it’s far more nuanced than the Coursera version; shouldn’t I get credit at Antioch for that reading, since it taught me more than the course did? Finally: at the end I got a certificate based on my successful completion of some of the most awful MCQ tests I’ve seen. I was allowed to take them up to 1000 times in my attempt to get them right! So how will you know I learned a single thing?
Best of luck with all that.
- mgozaydin
  
  JJ
  Please be patient .
  Top schools online courses are very very good .
  They are the same as the oncampus version .
  Exams are very rigid .
  I say MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, DUKE, uPENN , Princeton are all very good schools and very good courses .
  You are right . I would not allow to adapt low schools online courses for credit . Also course should be the same as oncampus course .
  Mostly they are 3 credit courses . But school admin can decide on how many credits a course would be. No problem .
  Plus exams can be made by Antioch as well .
- mgozaydin
  
  JJ
  Please tell everyone what course you have taken at MOOC.
  Say and let everybody know about it .
  That is very useful information .
mgozaydin

This is a revolution.
I congratulate Antioch Admimistration very highly .
I wish they allow their students to take online
Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, Princeton, and the like universities for credit .
1.- This will increase the quality of education at Antioch
2.- Cost of taking education at Antioch will be reduced 10 % for each online course taken ( I assume 10 courses per year for full tuition )
3.- If 5 courses are taken then saving is 50 %
4.- There will be extra created space at the college 100 % .
That is if every student take 5 online courses and there are 6,000 students at the college then a space of 6,000 students will be created.
Again these 6,000 students will take 5 online courses per year .
Then total number of students is 12,000 and also tuition is halved .
Is that a dream .
Assume all colleges follow Antioch.
Theoretically capacity of USA colleges increased to 36 million and all tuitions are halved . Is that a dream .
mgozaydin

Assume all colleges in the USA accepts the ANTIOCH MODEL
1.- Adopt 5 online courses from MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Columbia, Uni of Michigan etc then all colleges will save 50 % from their cost and therefore they will reduce tuition by 50 &
2.- Every college will create 100 % more capacity for new students
3.- Quality in all colleges will increase with Stanford, Harvard, MIT uPENN quality
4.- There will be still some oncampus experience 50 %
5.- Colleges can assign a facilitator even to increase more of the quality
6.- Colleges can do their own exams, no cheating, no autentication problem
7.- There is a vast space at the colleges 18 million more space
PLEASE FOLLOW THE ANTIOCH MODEL