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ROLE OF MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES IN LIFELONG HIGHER EDUCATION
S. I. Kolesnikov
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) are now becoming increasingly popular. The first MOOC appeared in 2008. They were based on the theory of connectionism, suggested by George Siemens and Stephen Downes. This type of course has become very popular within quite a short period of time. The year 2011 was referred to as that of connective Massive Open Online Courses (cMOOC). In the same year, Stanford University held several open courses in information technologies, viz. Artificial Intelligence Basics, which was referred to as хМООС. сMOOC is based on the connective approach, while хМООС employs the cognitive behavioural approach (cf. Figure 1).
|xMOOC-1 2011
2013
|| cognitivism jefore 2008
behaviorism
|educational analytics||
|Web2.0|
constructivism | ^before 2008
connectivism
/
;|cmooc|
Figure 1. MOOC approaches according to V.N. Kukharenko
The largest MOOC platforms are Coursera, edX, Udacity, and Udemy, which are located in the USA. The founders invested US $60 million to establish edX and US $16 million to establish Udacity. Coursera spent US $22 million to organise хМООС. In 2013, Coursera, originally uniting 33 universities, including Princeton University, Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University, The California Institute of Technology, The University of Edinburgh, The University of Toronto, Columbia University, The University of Pennsylvania, etc., was joined by The National University of Singapore, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and The Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau near Paris. Nowadays, Coursera is a partner of as
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many as 107 universities. The edX platform has increased the number of partners up to 12. Among others, it was joined by Australian National University, Delft University of Technology, and McGill University, Canada. Udacity, established by professors of Stanford University in 2011, co-operates with the Universities of Colorado and San Jose. MOOC covers vast geographical areas. In particular, Coursera participants were from the USA (27.7%), India (8.8%), Brazil (5.1%), Great Britain (4.4%), Spain (4%), Canada (3.6%), Australia (2.3%), and Russia (2.2%), as of March 2013 [4]. Participants from 182 other countries account for 41.9%.
Active development of distance e-learning in the world has been caused by the following factors: (1) massive demand for lifelong education. The average number of participants registered for MOOC is about 50,000, to say nothing of the courses with more than 100,000 participants of differing age and education; (2) the impossibility of supporting the demand from government budgets; (3) people wish to study under individual syllabi that do not fit the frameworks of formal basic curricula; (4) the continuous increase in prices for formal education; and (5) countries and the participants of the educational market need an effective tool for attraction of as many students as possible [5, с. 9]. MOOC have the advantage of being free for universities, the state, and the students: there is no need to create textbooks, teaching, or methodological materials, or to fund the academic and research process of universities; nor is there a need for universities in general and research and pedagogical workers in particular; higher education can be received free of charge at the time which is convenient for the student.
In fact, the training process is free of charge; however, the student pays for the certificate, testing and instructors' work. In particular, the Coursera Certificate costs from US $30 to $80, depending on the duration of the course in case of an independent examination, and from US $150 to $250 if the examination is supervised by a teacher [5, c. 10]. Students pay up to €400 for the credit certificate taken into account when conferring a degree [3]. In 2012, more than 50,000 Russian citizens were trained in online courses of the USA and properly certificated. Assuming that each of them paid US $100 for the certificate, the revenues from the sale of certificates amount to US $5 million.
At first sight, MOOC seems to be a barrier-free environment; however, the students face some obstacles. The first is the language barrier. Learning assumes profound knowledge of the English language, although Coursera translates its contents into many languages of the world, even Russian and Kazakh. The second obstacle is learning motivation. First of all, one has to know how to study at MOOC, be responsible, and somehow benefit from this pastime. As a natural result, the audience of these resources is mostly made up of university graduates [2]. Third is the large attrition of participants, viz. 85% from хМООС and 40% from сMOOC [3]; however, the students that have registered for the courses but not completed them say that many of them are absolutely satisfied with the volume of information they managed to receive and it is quite sufficient for them to apply their skills in the areas they need. The fourth problem is recognition of the MOOC-issued certificate by other participants of the academic process and employers. In other words, it is necessary to make the certificates valid for employment and career growth in any
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country. The fifth hindrance is identification of the student and plagiarism. It is impossible to check if the person sitting at the computer during the examination is the same as the student who attended the course. It is also impossible to check whether the student did everything him-/herself or consulted other people [1, с. 153]. According to experts, most of these problems are to be solved within the next 5 years.
The main objectives in the development of distance e-learning in competitor countries and consequences of this development for the higher education of Russia are (a) reduction of the intellectual potential in the competitor country. As a result, the national educational system will be destroyed; (b) the competitor country population will prefer education at universities of the country providing online education free of charge or at low prices. As a result, students will stop studying at universities of their country and will pay for education in another country, thereby strengthening its intellectual potential; (c) students are immersed in the culture of another country and absorb its values. As a result, they will promote the interests of the competitor country to the detriment of their national interests.
Under the circumstances, Russian higher education can consider the following paths. Firstly, it can ignore this manner of development. Secondly, it can only use foreign online courses. According to First Deputy Chairman of the Education Committee of the State Duma of the Russian Federation O.N. Smolin, both of these paths will have almost identical consequences: degradation of the Russian national educational system and stagnation of the intellectual potential of our country, which will make further modernisation of Russia almost impossible [5, p. 10]. There is only one acceptable way, viz. creation of Russian massive open online courses. That is the only way that can provide Russia with competitive advantages in attraction of human capital and its accrual. Actually, massive open online courses have already appeared in Russia. The current open online courses are offered by Interneturok.ru, Lectorium, INTUIT National Open University, and the paid university of Eduson.tv, specialising in business education. Unfortunately, most of these courses follow the traditional methods of Russian education, and the only innovation is in posting of the materials on the Internet.
In 2013, Coursera took on three Russian universities as partners. The first courses will be presented by Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (Electricity and Magnetism, GPU Simulation of Biological Molecules), St. Petersburg State University (History of Russia, Russian Language, Applied Bioinformatics) and the Higher School of Economics National Research University (12 courses, 7 of which are in Russian: Financial Markets and Tools, Microeconomic Basics, Labour Economics, History of Economic Thought, Industrial Organisation, Macroeconomics, and Corporate Finance Basics). The projects have been scheduled for the first half of 2014, with registration starting from February.
To sum up, development of distance e-learning is now the guideline for modernisation of the Russian higher education system connected with implementation of lifelong or continuous education.
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References
1. Бугайчук К. Л. Массовые открытые дистанционные курсы: история, типология, перспективы // Высшее образование в России. - 2013. - № 3.
2. Данилина А. Массовые открытые онлайн курсы становятся альтернативой традиционной системе образования // Учительская газета. 13.09.2013. URL: http://www.ug.ru/article/654/ (дата обращения: 10.01.2014).
3. Кухаренко В. Н. Массовый открытый онлайн курс «Дистанционное обучение от А до
Я» // E-learning world: мир электронного обучения. 2012. URL:
http://www.elw.ru/practice/detail/1965/. Дата обращения: 10.01.2014.
4. Сакоян А. МООК: революция в мире образования // Полит.ру. 30.05.2013. URL: http://www.polit.ru/article/2013/05/30/mooc. Дата обращения: 10.01.2014.
5. Смолин О. Н. Высшее образование накануне потрясений: заочный диалог с министром // Ректор вуза. - 2013. - № 10.
Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translations Bureau
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