MOOCs and the Challenge of Providing a Global Education

How MOOCs Could Meet the Challenge of Providing a Global Education | MIT Technology Review: " . . . Many are now already looking to the next phases of these online courses in the developing world, a future that may look more like a blending of online and traditional college work than one existing entirely on the Internet. In India, for example, Microsoft Research, which has offices in Bangalore, is working with universities on “massively empowered classrooms” that provide online lectures, forums, and quizzes to engineering undergraduates at many different schools taking the same computer science course. Another idea of interest in India is a Microsoft research project that scans the content of e-textbooks and pulls out the most important concepts that could be paired with online instructional videos. So an Indian professor, for example, could talk about electromagnetic fields next to a diagram from a physics text. Another project, called VidWiki, allows anyone to annotate a video with comments and text in their own language. For the MOOCs themselves, there are more immediate practicalities, such as how to provide real-world certifications, regardless of location. To help with this, Coursera is experimenting with ways to verify student identities. Udacity, on the other hand, is simply working with physical testing centers around the world run by the company Pearson. . . . "


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