Distance Learning.
Prohibitive cost, limited access, tight schedules, old age evaluation methods, and list can go on and on if we start listing the problem associated with current system of higher education Alhamdulillah, with distance learning emerging as one of the promising alternative to present day education system, things are changing slowly but surely. Distance learning may not turn the present education system upside down within short span of time, but the flexibility and advantages offered by distance learning are enormous and definitely it will be a game changer over a period of time.
With distance online learning a professor who is teaching few hundred students at college campus can reach hundreds of thousands of students globally. Students can benefit from coaching of some of the best professors in the world on a given topic. Students can repeat the course as many times as they need, learn as per their ability, and master any given topic. This is certainly set to evolve in a very cost effective and flexible system of educating future generations.
Distance learning has another very unique advantage, in the words of Prof Thrun who is co-founder of Udacity, “We really set up our students for failure. We don’t help students to become smart. I started realizing that grades are the failure of the education system. [When students don’t earn good grades, it means] educators have failed to bring students to A+ levels. So rather than grading students, my task was to make students successful……Today, when someone fails, we don’t take time to make them a strong student. We give them a C or a D, move them to the next class. Then they’re branded a loser, and they’re set up for failure. This medium (distance learning) has the potential to change all that.”[1]
Following are some of the leading players in distance learning education system; let us learn in their own words – who they are?
EDX.
EdX is a not for profit learning enterprise founded by Harvard and MIT that offers free online courses from the world’s best professors and universities to anyone in the world with Internet access. Our vision is to increase access to quality education, improve learning results and create a culture of lifetime learners by leveraging Internet optimized learning technologies and online and blended learning models. We believe we can provide truly world class online courses to everyone, everywhere, regardless of social status or income, while also improving on campus education. Our goal is to educate 1 billion students worldwide in the next 10 years.
WHY AND WHEN WAS IT FOUNDED?
Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology created edX in May 2012 with three goals in mind: 1) to open up access to quality education globally 2) improve on campus education and 3) conduct research to understand more precisely how students learn.
WHAT IS A MOOC?
A MOOC is a massive open online course. It is massive in that it is not limited by the four walls of a school building. Literally hundreds of thousands of people can take a MOOC at one time. It is open in that anyone, regardless of social status, income or academic affiliation may sign up and participate in the courses. It is an online course but as you will see with edX, online is only the beginning.
WHO TAKES EDX COURSES?
Anyone with a desire to learn and a way to connect to the Internet. From Battushig, a 15 year old high school student from Mongolia who aced the MITx Circuits & Engineering class to young professionals in the U.S. and United Kingdom who are taking classes to reach new career goals, our student population is diverse in every sense of the word. EdX learners range in age from 14 to 76, with students from 192 countries around the world, and our registrations increase every day.
UDACITY.
Education is no longer a one-time event but a lifelong experience. Education should be less passive listening (no long lectures) and more active doing. Education should empower students to succeed not just in school but in life. We are reinventing education for the 21st century by bridging the gap between real-world skills, relevant education, and employment. Our students will be fluent in new technology, modern mathematics, science, and critical thinking. They will marry skills with creativity and humanity to learn, think, and do.
Udacity was born out of a Stanford University experiment in which Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig offered their “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” course online to anyone, for free. Over 160,000 students in more than 190 countries enrolled and not much later, Udacity was born. Now we’re a growing team of educators and engineers on a mission to change the future of education by bridging the gap between real-world skills, relevant education, and employment. Our students will be fluent in new technology, modern programming, science, and critical thinking. They will marry skills with creativity and humanity to learn, think, and do
Coursera
We believe in connecting people to a great education so that anyone around the world can learn without limits. Coursera is an education company that partners with the top universities and organizations in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. Our technology enables our partners to teach millions of students rather than hundreds.
We envision a future where everyone has access to a world-class education that has so far been available to a select few. We aim to empower people with education that will improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in.
Our Courses
Classes offered on Coursera are designed to help you master the material. When you take one of our classes, you will watch lectures taught by world-class professors, learn at your own pace, test your knowledge, and reinforce concepts through interactive exercises. When you join one of our classes, you’ll also join a global community of thousands of students learning alongside you. We know that your life is busy, and that you have many commitments on your time. Thus, our courses are designed based on sound pedagogical foundations, to help you master new concepts quickly and effectively. Key ideas include mastery learning, to make sure that you have multiple attempts to demonstrate your new knowledge; using interactivity, to ensure student engagement and to assist long-term retention; and providing frequent feedback, so that you can monitor your own progress, and know when you’ve really mastered the material.
We offer courses in a wide range of topics, spanning the Humanities, Medicine, Biology, Social Sciences, Mathematics, Business, Computer Science, and many others. Whether you’re looking to improve your resume, advance your career, or just learn more and expand your knowledge, we hope there will be multiple courses that you find interesting.
UDEMY
Udemy helps students make moves. Whether you want to get promoted, break into a new industry, start a company, further a passion, or just accelerate your life, Udemy helps you learn from the amazing instructors in the world, so that you can get there and get there faster.
Our team recruits the world’s top experts, including New York Times best-selling authors, CEOs, celebrities, and Ivy League professors. These expert instructors have taught over 2 million students on Udemy, helping them learn everything from programming to photography to design to yoga and more. Founded in 2010, Udemy is funded by Insight Venture Partners, Lightbank, MHS Capital, 500 Startups and other investors who previously foresaw the internet giants YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Groupon and Yelp. Udemy is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Good to become teacher here.
We’re a small team with a big vision – to democratize education. For us, that means two things:
1) Enabling the top experts in the world to teach any student, anywhere, and
2) Radically lowering the price point on a top quality education.
We’re looking for folks who are incredibly hungry, passionate, smart, fun, scrappy (we could go on :-)) to help us achieve that vision.
KHAN ACADEMY.
Salman Khan of Khan Academy is considered the rock star of distance learning.
Mission: To provide free world class education to anyone anywhere.
Khan academy in nutshell.
Khan Academy is 501 (C) 3 non-profit with a mission of providing a free world class education anyone anywhere. Khan academy provides free online educational materials (e.g. exercises, instructional videos, dashboard analytics, teacher tools) that support personalized education for users of all ages in a scalable way. In the last two years, the organization has delivered over 350 million lessons and 1.7 billion exercise problems. Currently it has 10 million users per month and over 4 million exercise problems.
We are a fast-paced, nonprofit startup that is backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Google, among other philanthropists. Our mission is to provide a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. We already provide education to millions of students every month, and we’re growing quickly.
We are passionate about personalizing learning — we envision a world where technology helps redefine how teachers run their classes, with individualized instruction, real-time monitoring of student performance, and more time for human interaction and creativity.
