Top Universities Expand Free Online Classes : NPR

[Owen Densmore]

NPR has a segment on edX (what used to be MITX), coursera, and
udacity.  The last two are for-profit, the first non-profit.
     http://www.npr.org/2012/05/03/151907385/top-universities-expand-free-online-classes

One interesting point is that the students are providing good data for
education research.  A transcript of the audio is below if you'd
prefer not to listen:

   -- Owen

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Harvard and MIT are investing $60 million into a joint venture called
edX. Its mission is to provide interactive university classes online
for free to anyone in the world. It's the latest move by top
universities to expand their intellectual reach through the Internet.
And as NPR's Steve Henn reports, some are calling this effort
transformational.

STEVE HENN, BYLINE: Susan Hockfield is MIT's president. She believes
there's never been a better time to be in higher education.

SUSAN HOCKFIELD: You can chose to view this era as one of threatening
change and unsettling volatility, or you can see it as a moment
charged with the most exciting possibilities presented to educators in
our lifetimes.

HENN: One of the reasons' Hockfield loves her job and this moment is
that for the first time, universities like hers are able to offer
graded classes online for free. Together with Harvard, MIT is
launching a new non-profit called edX to do just that. Its backers
hope to reach millions, maybe even a billion of students.

HOCKFIELD: Online education is not an enemy of residential education,
but rather a profoundly liberating and inspiring ally.

HENN: In the last few months, there's been a virtual stampede of Ivy
League universities and professors online. Stanford, Berkeley,
Princeton, UPenn and Michigan are all working with a start-up named
Coursera to offer more than 40 graded classes in subjects ranging from
computers science to public policy and poetry. All these classes are
completely free.

Another start up called Udacity is doing almost the same thing. Some
of their classes have attracted more than 100,000 students each. But
there's one thing none of these students will get: a degree. Sebastian
Thrun would like to change that.

SEBASTIAN THRUN: I really want to reinvent universities for the
future, and I really want to understand how can we use digital media
in the best possible way to enhance the learning experience.

HENN: Thrun gave up his faculty position at Stanford to launch
Udacity. Daphne Koller is one of the Coursera's co-founders and also a
Stanford professor. She says these massively open online classes can
transform hundreds of lives.

DAPHNE KOLLER: The grocery stocker who had thought he would end up his
life doing exactly that. And by taking this kind of class, he realized
all of a sudden that he can be more than that and decided to go back
to school. So it's that kind of a story, where you've profoundly
impacted people's lives that really makes this effort as worthwhile as
it is.

HENN: Coursera and Udacity are set up as for-profit companies. They're
both funded by venture capitalists. Harvard and MIT's project is
different. It's a non-profit, and its backers promised to make the
data they collect about online education and the software they develop
available to anyone.

DREW FAUST: Harvard and MIT are institutions devoted to research.

HENN: Drew Faust is Harvard's president.

FAUST: Through this partnership, we will not only make knowledge more
available, but we will learn more about learning.

HENN: It turns out, when 100,000 people take a class online and sit
through quizzes and tests, you can find out a lot about which lectures
and lessons are working and which ones are not.

ANANT AGARWAL: So, for example, we gather huge amounts of data.

HENN: Anant Agarwal at MIT says in an online class, you know exactly
which lectures capture a student's attention.

AGARWAL: How much time are students spending on various videos and
exercises? You know, what do they go back to? And so on. So all this
rich data, this is big data, in its biggest form.

HENN: And it can help researchers figure out which teaching methods
work and which ones don't. Over time, Agarwal says that data will make
all classes - both those online and those at the old-fashion
universities - even better.

Steve Henn, NPR News, Silicon Valley.

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