MOOCs(e.g Coursera): the next best thing on the web after Facebook!

MOOC: Massive Open Online Course

Certificate from Coursera(a platform offering MOOCs)

Online tutorials aren't a new addition to internet by any means. Many of us have taken up online tutorials sometime or the other. However these online courses were hobbyist by nature; they were all of different format/structure, scattered all over the internet; they addressed some niche field of study(generally related to computers); lacked any popular recognition and almost entirely lacked human touch(they were completely automated).

First, online courses were just text or videos followed by set of quizzes (e.g www.w3schools.com). Then, MIT pioneered the practice of putting many of it's credit courses as freely accessible online modules through the OpenCourseWare program (http://ocw.mit.edu/)[and thus online Tutorials became online Courses]. Many followed suit, including our own IITs and IISc(http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/). OpenCourseWare had the backing of MIT(no hobbyist!), it was a central repository of MIT's courses, all courses had a similar structure and the courses covered topics from several different fields of study. However, it still lacked something.

Enter the MOOCs on the stage. My experience is almost entirely with www.coursera.org (Coursera, founded 2012), the most popular MOOC platform(there are several others including Udacity, EdX). MOOCs are similar to any other online course except that:

• Each course is delivered by an Instructor who is affiliated to a University.
• Course is delivered through a series of lecture videos designed specifically for online learners(it's generally NOT a online copy of real world course)
• The course runs in a limited time window(e.g 14 weeks, much like a semester). The material becomes available one week at a time, as the course progresses and the assignments have to be completed within a fixed deadline to receive credits for it.
• Several(sometimes lakhs) of people take the course simultaneously in the limited window and they interact(discuss doubts, ask questions) on discussion forums associated with the course.The discussion forum is moderated by Teaching Assistants.
• On successful completion of course, participants receive a certificate signed by the instructor(subject to attaining sufficient credits). Certificate bears the name of Instructor and the name of University which offered the course.

What I like about MOOCs:

• EXCELLENT course material and fabulous instructors. Just consider some of the instructors whose courses I have taken till now:

         Bill Howe, Director of Research, Scalable Data Analytics,University of Washington
         Andrew Ng, Director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab, Stanford University
         Scott Plous, Professor of Psychology, Wesleyan University
         Dan Ariely, Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics, Duke University

• Most of the courses are designed for "life long learners" i.e they have minimal prerequisites.
• The discussion forums are lively and meaningful (probably because of good moderation). I have myself got into debates(sometimes hot) several times!
• The Certificate :) And the best part is, people have said in forums that the courses actually helped them change their major field of employment!

Brick and mortar schools and colleges have already started accepting credit earned from MOOCs (http://www.skilledup.com/blog/coursera-certificate-whats-it-worth/). When are you doing a MOOC?