
MITx positions to offer certification for completing courses online - troyastorino
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/mitx-faq-1219.html
======
SiVal
The cost of an American university education is ridiculously more than its
value. It should be crystal clear that most of what you are paying for is the
credential, not the education. The first elite university to break up the
monolithic credential into an a la carte system of finer-grained credentials,
with high standards backed by the reputation of the institution but open to
all, regardless of how they learned the material, will change the world of
education forever. Each narrow credential will move independently to its true
market value (sorry, lit crit professors), people will pay much less by paying
only for what they need, yet people who would never go back to get another
whole degree will frequently go back for additional narrower credentials over
the course of a career. Elite institutions can stay elite by keeping their
standards high and may end up making more money than they ever did under
today's absurd system.

The article made it clear that MIT was desperate to avoid diluting their own
brand equity ("we'll grant certifications using a subsidiary with some other
name so there's NO confusion"), but it looks to me as though the industry is
heading in the direction I'm talking about one way or another.

~~~
crx
I created an account just to upvote you.

This is a very brave step in the right direction. In the long run they can NOT
justify to give those remote learners not a "real" MIT degree (and I am sure
they know this).

~~~
Anechoic
_In the long run they can NOT justify to give those remote learners not a
"real" MIT degree (and I am sure they know this)._

The remote learner won't be getting the same experience as the residential
learner. If nothing else, the remote leaner will be missing out on the lab
work (remember "Mens et Manus") which is just as important as the academic
work. As an MIT ME my lab work involved transducer work (accelerometers,
strain gauges, microphones, LVDTs, DAQs, filters, etc) and manufacturing
processes (CAD/CAM, injection molding, welding, machine shop, vacuum forming,
CNC, etc) and actually having hands-on experience greatly assisted in my
understanding of the academic work - for example, it's one thing to look at
the calculations for plastic shrinkage, it's another thing to actually see how
shrinkage can vary in your freshly-injection molded part, especially when the
dyes used for color can affect shrinkage rates.

~~~
ap22213
Yes, true, but I'd bet that a lot of that could be outsourced to 3rd party
regional or urban lab centers.

~~~
Anechoic
At that point you may as well just attend your local community college or
state institution.

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blhack
I really get the feeling, first from OCW, and now this, that MIT really just
does want to promote knowledge.

This is seriously one of the coolest things I've heard about in a while.

(I wonder how much "mastery" in some of these classes could play into applying
to the school, proper?)

MIT is one of my favorite _things_ , period.

~~~
TechNewb
Agreed. MIT is an amazing institution.

I hope to somehow use their open source video course infrastructure at the
university that I work for.

MIT is being a leader for all universities in this field. And it's not like
they are 'giving away the milk for free'; because the most valuable part of
MIT, besides the diploma, are the people sitting next to you in class.
Networking is king, and where better than to network at MIT?

~~~
tybris
Stanford.

------
johnohara
Under the FAQ for MITx:

 _If credentials are awarded, will they be awarded by MIT? As online learning
and assessment evolve and improve, online learners who demonstrate mastery of
subjects could earn a certificate of completion, but any such credential would
not be issued under the name MIT. Rather, MIT plans to create a not-for-profit
body within the Institute that will offer certification for online learners of
MIT coursework. That body will carry a distinct name to avoid confusion._

The true paradigm shift in education will happen when a student takes an
"independent certification exam" related to a specific subject and is
recognized as proficient regardless of how it was learned.

MITx is taking one more step in this direction.

The CollegeBoard's Advanced Placement Program does this now. High school
students are allowed to take an AP exam whether they have taken an AP course
or not. Their score on the exam (1 - 5) is a "recommendation" value that
colleges agree to use to grant course credit.

It costs AP students $80 to take an exam. What would happen if MIT adopted
this approach and charged $99 to "take the final?" Or consider the Machine
Learning course at Stanford with 100,000 registrants. Were 1/3 of them to pay
$99 to take the final, the benefit to Stanford would be north of $3.2M
dollars! One course. They posted 20 new courses in November alone.

Compare that to what universities make by offering a residential class and the
model gets clearer.

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learc83
_All of the teaching on the platform will be free of charge. Those who have
the ability and motivation to demonstrate mastery of content can receive a
credential for a modest fee_

At last, the final piece of the puzzle. With a fee structure in place they can
afford employees to grade more intensive assignments. It looks like we might
finally get a viable competitor to traditional degrees.

You need to hire a programmer, well look, this guy took intro CS, algorithms,
compilers, software engineering, Java etc... from MITx.

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ernestipark
I am currently a CS student at MIT and heard that one of my classmates is
actually not a student, but paid just to take one course while working full
time at a big tech company. If efforts like MITx become very legitimate, it
could be a good way to formalize training for employees and educating them on
specific subjects. e.g CS generalist takes a graphics course to help in a new
endeavor at his/her company.

~~~
kokey
The potential for companies to use this to compliment their staff training is
great. It could be a good additional source of income for MIT too, making sure
their standards remain high.

~~~
eru
Typo, but actually a nice idea on its one: You can not only use it to train
your staff, but also to compliment them. Some people like application for its
own sake, and it's a kind of bonus to them.

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gazrogers
Interesting that as US institutions are ramping up their online education
offerings, the UK government is cutting funding for the Open University
(open.ac.uk) which is probably one of the pioneers in the area. A microcosm of
the UK's involvement in technology in general I think.

~~~
kokey
Open University is quite expensive if you're not a local tax payer. They could
probably do well by dropping their prices to foreign students to increase
volume. From what I have seen, their courses are good and I tend to recommend
them to others.

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sim
Stanford experimented and seemed to have found a right balance for effective
online-learning, now MIT is fine tuning OCW. Exciting news.

    
    
      Keys needed:
    
      * quality teaching and teachers
      * highly relevant courses
      * learners in batch
      * online office hour weekly
      * feedback mechanism, sense of connection
      * discussion forums - e.g. reddit
    

Image MIT's 10-year OCW content.

e.g. Engineering and Computer Science:
[http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/#electrical-engineering-and-
compu...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/#electrical-engineering-and-computer-
science)

Awesome.

~~~
mattmanser
Other key needed:

* A way to pay for it.

~~~
worren
To a certain extent, a program like this can pay for itself. A school's
influence greatly affects the attention (read: grants and contracts) that labs
and faculty enjoy basking in. Conversely, competitors theories and techniques
are left clawing their way out of obscurity for lucrative funding. Patents and
spinoffs make it big business, and all is fair...

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fvryan
Another addition to the edu|tech disruption brewing.

Will be exciting to see whether the disruption comes top-down from the
institutions or bottom-up from startups like codecademy/khanacademy.

I'm bullish on the startups at this point, but happy to see the institutions
giving it a go.

------
robryan
Theses online courses are the way of the future. In times when governments
look to try and get better results for investments made in education they just
make a lot more sense. Rather than giving 100 students a solid base in say AI
you are giving 20000+ a level of learning almost as good a similar amount of
academic time spent.

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Miserlou57
I am going to ask a really selfish question here.

I've begun working on something in my spare time that is extraordinarily
similar to this MITx. It's not exactly the same, but the model essentially is;
all content is free and always will be. Paying for certifying that it was you
is the only optional cost. Considering it's so similar, though ideally my
version is more open in a number of ways, what does a lowly student trying to
build something like this do in light of this news?

Even though this is good news for education overall, I'm literally sitting
here, somewhat devastated, hearing that this precise model and idea I've been
obsessing over for months is gaining so much talk as 'the final piece to the
puzzle,' etc. Do I continue with it and make it better than theirs?

Any advice would be awesome.

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Mithrandir
_OCW provides course material for nearly all MIT classes. Will MITx offer
interactive online courses at that same scale?_

 _No. MITx will begin by offering a portfolio of selected courses, which will
grow over time. The selection of courses will depend on the interests of MIT
faculty and online learners and will be determined on a course-by-course
basis._

I'm guessing that 6.00 will be one of those classes, but Stanford started with
AI/ML/DB so I might be wrong. In any event, the prototype should pretty much
correspond with Stanford's new batch of online classes.

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tlammens
I guess this is a response to the classes some Stanford professors have been
teaching:

<http://www.ai-class.org/>

<http://www.ml-class.org/>

<http://www.db-class.org/> and more to come in January.

I took part in two of them and it was a great experience, so I welcome the
competition :-)

~~~
amirmc
I doubt it was a 'response' per se. MIT OCW has been going for 10 years,
whereas Stanford's offerings are more recent (from 2008, I believe).

Perhaps they've been encouraged to say something publicly about existing
plans, since profs at Stanford have just opened a slew of new courses from
next Jan onwards.

Aside: It would be really interesting to know how the profs at MIT felt about
the Stanford courses. AFAIK, Stanford wasn't 'officially' involved in the
online courses and it was primarily driven by the profs themselves.

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pdonis
Makes me proud to have MIT as my alma mater. They were ahead of the game with
OCW and are staying ahead.

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aangjie
Hmm.. Think it is a good idea indeed... But does remind me of Stanford's
online courses effort. [http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/august/online-
computer-sc...](http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/august/online-computer-
science-081611.html)

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henrik_w
Probably a response to the Stanford courses. I took the course Introduction to
Databases, and it was really great. I wrote about the experience here:
<http://henrikwarne.com>

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Vivtek
_That_ was the key missing component. MIT may well end up changing the world.

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goviheintz
This news has made my day!

