'Conventional' online universities consider strategic response to MOOCs
... [N]ow that higher education’s traditional heavyweights are creating online courses and offering them for free to anyone who wants to register, those universities that have made names for themselves in the market for “conventional” online programs are trying to sort out how these high-profile MOOCs could affect their own positions in an online market where many have staked their futures.
... [T]he top brands in higher education have turned heads by suddenly investing in what they promise will be innovative online teaching and assessment techniques. Their emphasis on harnessing data to create personalized, measurable learning experiences, as well as their interest in building alternative job pipelines that might render a traditional college credential beside the point, has suggested that Stanford and MIT do not merely want to show their faces in the online medium but want in fact to take their places at the front of the class.
... Now that Stanford, MIT and other brands that “no one’s going to question” have ventured into the online territories, one could propose that “the traditional brand pecking order” will “reassert itself online,” says Richard Garrett, managing director of Eduventures. Especially since the most desirable brands are offering their product for free.
... [T]he idea of helping students redeem MOOC learning for college credits, for a fee, has already gotten some traction since a number of online institutions already have the infrastructure in place to assess "nontraditional" learning experiences.
The University of Maryland University College, a long-running distance education provider that has become a powerhouse in the online era, envisions a role for UMUC of validating MOOC learning through the university’s prior-learning assessment arm. This could help the university funnel bright, motivated MOOC students into its online degree programs, says Marie Cini, the acting provost of UMUC. “If you want to finish your degree we’re the place that will allow you to do that easily and seamlessly,” says Cini.
John Cunningham, the acting CEO of UMassOnline, another well-reputed bastion of online programs, says his institution is also looking into awarding credit for MOOC learning.
Getting credit for MOOC learning through a prior-learning apparatus is not as easy as submitting one’s MOOC exam scores with a form letter from the instructor and then waiting for the credit to be posted. Rather it is a highly involved process that, while allegedly less expensive and time-consuming than sitting through a course, nevertheless requires patience, dedication and money.
A student who wants to convert MOOC learning into a credit through UMUC, for example, would first have to enroll at the university (application fee: $30). Then she would have to take a semesterlong online course costing $753 or $1,497 depending on whether she qualifies for in-state or military discounts. During that course she would, with the help of an adviser, develop a portfolio to submit for evaluation. The centerpiece of the portfolio would be a long essay that presents “a narrative explaining how [her] learning maps to the learning outcomes” in a particular course at UMUC, according to Cynthia Davis, the acting undergraduate dean at the university.
The student could include in her portfolio any exam scores or blandishments she earned in MOOCs, but she could not submit those instead of writing the essay or taking the course, says Davis.
After that, the student would have to pay again to have someone at the university evaluate her portfolio: $250 for the first subject area, then $125 for any others beyond that. Finally, if the evaluator determines that whatever learning she picked in her MOOC was indeed credit-worthy, she would have to pay $90 for each credit.
All told, students can expect to spend a minimum of $1,300 to convert the learning picked up in a MOOC into three college credits. That is, of course, in addition to the hours and effort they sink into actually taking the MOOC.
There is an alternative: Students can pay a fee to take a “challenge exam” to earn credit immediately for certain courses. But the nonrefundable exam fee is equivalent to the tuition of the course. UMUC charges about $250 per credit for in-state residents and military and $500 per credit for out-of-state students. And students who wish to take challenge exams also have to enroll at the university.
Moreover, the credit they would earn would be UMUC credit, not Harvard credit.
