Getting a Free Education, in Huge Online Classes
21 March 2012
Massachusetts Institute of Technology mathematics professor Gilbert Strang is among the many educators involved in massive open online courses
This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
A class with tens or even hundreds of thousands of students might sound like a teacher's bad dream. But a big idea in higher education these days is the massive open online course, or MOOC.
Some universities offer free, non-credit MOOCs available to anyone in the world. Others charge for courses and provide credits. The idea is still developing.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently started its first MOOC. The school plans to offer many free, non-credit courses through a project called MITx.
So far, most massive open online courses are in computer science, technology, mechanics and engineering. For example, students around the world are taking a free course called "Building a Computer Search Engine." Two computer scientists, Sebastian Thrun and David Evans, are offering this course through udacity.com.
Mr. Evans is on leave from the University of Virginia, where he is an associate professor. Mr. Thrun is a Stanford research professor and a Google Fellow best known for his work on a driverless car.
There are no education requirements for the course. The students watch short videos. Then, says Mr. Evans, they take informal, ungraded quizzes after the videos each week for six weeks.
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