Upgrading or learning a new skill

How many times you have felt that there is perhaps a need to upgrade your knowledge of the latest things in your field of choosing? Or how many times have you felt, that ‘it would be nice to know more about a subject that you had perhaps enjoyed during college days’ but the call of duty, from both personal and professional life, didn’t allow you the opportunity? Well now there is a chance to learn all of that for free through MOOCs. And there is also an option to pay and be certified.

MOOC

Massive open online courses (or MOOCs) are online courses trying to share college-level knowledge. All lectures and course materials are accessed online, and to check the knowledge given by the course there is a process whereby online tests would be available. In some cases there is a provision for peer review, where in other students will check your copy while you will check the other students’ copy.

“There are two aspects to MOOCs: a technology platform that can enable new pedagogy and mode of delivery that increases the reach to a much larger audiences,” says Sundar S Balasubramaniam, Dean, Academic and Resource Planning BITS Pilani. He further adds, “We believe that the technology is still evolving and there are many aspects of MOOCs which will complement conventional learning but also open up new modes of learning.” Balasubramaniam believes that MOOCs are likely to prove beneficial for mature learners and varied groups where learners will be able to learn at their own pace and way.

Isaac Chuang, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for electrical engineering and computer science and of physics, and also co-lead of a research team from MIT and Harvard shares the vision and thought behind MOOC. He says, “MIT sees that MOOCs may lead to the spread of knowledge worldwide, and improvements in on-campus education, such as in residential universities like MIT and Harvard.”

Stanford, another world renowned university, runs its own instance of an open-source online learning platform (Stanford OpenEdX) that supports research and experimentation in instructional design. In a report on MOOC 2013, John Mitchell Vice Provost Stanford was quoted as “Stanford's vision is much broader than MOOCs. We're thinking about how we will best educate students for generations to come.”

There are two directories which track all major MOOCs available online – www.mooc-list.com and www.class-central.com. One can either look for universities followed by courses offered or they can search for specific topics like – computer science or artificial intelligence, economics, music, etc, – and then decide on the university. Among the most popular MOOCs are Coursera, edX, saylor.org, Canvas, Alison, Udemy, etc. 

How will it help?

Abhay Tandon, an employee at Scaale Capital, took a course through the platform of Coursera, from University of Maryland’s on ‘Developing Innovative Ideas for New Companies’. He says that his MBA degree gave a strong theoretical understanding, but Coursera classes gave him a firm practical basis, like realizing how investors in Spain differ from those in the U.K.

Shashi Kant, a student at IIT, is doing various courses from Coursera and edX related to computer science. He reasons, “I am doing courses related to computer science as it supplements my course and it could pay off in career too as it provides you world class knowledge at just no cost.” He further adds that in the industry, the tag of your college will get you a platform but after that an individual will survive only through knowledge. He says, “Many of my friends (mostly students) are also doing these courses to improve their knowledge.”

Ketan Kapoor, Co-Founder and CEO, Mettl, a skill based online assessment platform, says, “We have seen the industry move from knowledge based hiring to skill based hiring.” He points that on the job skills and competencies are the most important selection criteria for most organizations. “If individuals are taking up the initiative of upskilling themselves, adding new feathers to their hats - they definitely come across as self-starters and motivated individuals to the hiring teams - apart from the obvious skill adds,” says Kapoor. However adding a word of caution against high hopes, he says, “The candidate applying with a certain skill set learnt from MOOCs will have a disadvantage against an experienced professional who has used that same skill set in his projects.”

Ajit Joshi, who was previously working as National Presales Manager at Ingram Micro India, says "One of the interesting incident was when I started watching the videos of Introduction to Operations, I realized there were so many things that I can implement at my company bringing in more efficiency and better coordination between departments."

Ashutosh Telang, EVP & Global Head HR, Marico says, “At Marico, we encourage employees to continuously upgrade their knowledge. Learning by doing is core to our development philosophy and this is supplemented by training, education, perspective building and coaching.”

Kapoor’s views were resonated in Telang’s words as well. Telang says, “Education and experience play an important role in assessing an individual’s capability.” Furthermore he says, “While potential talent and talent within the organization upgrade their domain knowledge through online courses or MDPs, what really matters is the ability to apply this knowledge in their work context to make a difference.”

Futures of MOOCs

Telang opines, “Access to curriculum through MOOCs conducted by reputed institutes enhances the credibility of the education and as more people enroll in MOOCs, organizations will have to take cognizance of this and revise their hiring guidelines.”

“The average age of learners registering for MITx courses is between 26 and 35 years old.  Many of these folks are professionals seeking to learn new things.  Such lifelong learning will naturally be of interest to corporations seeking to improve their workforces,” says Chuang of MIT.  

Balasubramaniam of BITS Pilani says, “The best thing about MOOCs apart from the immediate and tangible benefits is that it is forcing educators and administrators to think about learning and education in a fundamentally new way. In India MOOCs have the potential to enable half a billion India youth to access expertise in different domains.” Companies in a few countries have only invested in MOOCs but are also leveraging MOOCs for in-house training. Acceptability may take a few years but it is bound to happen. 

The Tough Part

Scheduling is an important criteria if you are student/working professional - some MOOCs allow you to join anytime of the year and some have the semester system, some allow you to learn at your own pace and some have strict schedules for lectures and assignments. Some courses provide you with a certification and some don't.

“The main challenge I found was varying deadlines because different Universities have different time issues in accordance of IST,” says Kant.

The Easy Part

Among the benefits, the most common benefit that everyone talked about were, since it is a video lecture you can pause and rewind to as many times as you want until you understand the concept. In a traditional classroom, it is highly unlikely. Secondly, one can do it anywhere as per their convenience, whether traveling in a bus, sitting in a cyber cafe or relaxing on a Sunday at home. Third, classroom participants comes from all over the world, hence, giving a complete sense of global learning with lot of new perspectives added from different angles in the discussion forums.

In Kant’s experience, “the good thing going through this format is that you are completely free to go at your own pace. In many courses you'll get new iterations of the course in just one or two upcoming months so you can have multiple options of doing such courses.”

Additionally Tandon believes there is one additional benefit, he says, “These courses don’t cost much and thus are a major value-add for those who can’t afford to take up regular courses.”

A word of Advice

Telang of Marico suggests that one should select content that is targeted and meaningful. He says, “Choose a course with videos, scenarios, case studies, and other application- focused learning activities. Most important part is to apply MOOCs experience to solve a practical challenge in work environment.” It is important to recognise that each one of us has a distinct learning style, being aware of it and choosing the right course and media goes a long way in building the capability.

Kapoor of Mettl advises, “If your focus is employability, then it makes a lot more sense to pick courses that compliment your portfolio and help you gain skills needed for your dream job.”

“Test yourself on the problems.  Data is showing that learners in MITx on edX courses spend far more time and effort working on problems than using any other kind of resource provided by the course,” says Chuang.

This is the submission draft. The actual story had appeared in August issue of Money Today. You can read the final version (which includes experience of individuals). Click here or copy paste the given below link - http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/free-online-courses-mooc-harvard-mit-bits-pilani/1/208508.html