By Richard T. Griffiths, Leiden University.
As you read this column, about eight thousand people from almost every country in the World will have watched at least one of my lectures in a course entitled “Configuring the World: A Political Economy Approach”. It runs until the end of March, so there is still time to take a look, but it will run again in its entirety next September.
The course is hosted on a platform called Coursera to which 120 universities are affiliated, including Leiden. Over twelve million students have already followed one of the courses. There is no charge. Welcome to the World of MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses.
There is a great on-going debate about MOOCs. One end of the spectrum predicts the end of traditional universities. Why pay for a second rate education when you can get one free from some of the top universities in the World? At the other extreme there are those who dismiss MOOCs as all hype and no substance. How can one boast about replacing universities, when only about ten per cent of those registered ever complete a course?
My own position is that traditional universities are safe. They are no more likely to disappear now than they were when the printing press was invented. Why go to classes, when you can read the book? The answer is also the same now as it was then – good teachers can help, explain, explore and inspire. Even so, MOOC lectures can enhance the learning experience.
Some advantages are built into the MOOC itself. The MOOC videos are usually short, bite-sized expositions of a topic, which can be watched where, when, and as often as they desired. They are accompanied by English language subtitles and, in my own case, by subtitles in another eight languages. This bonus is entirely the result of those who followed the first run of the course and who volunteered to translate the transcripts, which speaks volumes for their identification with and commitment to this particular MOOC and to MOOCs in general.
Within each MOOC there is a built-in forum where participants from many different backgrounds and with different experiences can explore issues. We have also used visualizations to breakdown and reconstruct maps of World data, something that is difficult to convey in a lecture and impossible to do in a book.
MOOCs can also enhance classroom teaching. Videos can be used to frame class discussions. They can also link classes in different parts of the World together. For example, last year we had a Skype session with university students in Kenya. Finally, they can give students thinking of following a course at university a taste of what they can expect, to help them make the correct choices for themselves and prepare for an exciting future where university class-rooms coexist in cyberspace .
