04-02-2015, 01:46 PM
I have extensive experience with MOOCs as I am using them as a tool to help educate someone on subjects they were never taught in High School. For this application they are helpful. However, the studies I have read show that the majority of people taking MOOcs either already have a degree or at least attended college so they are not doing what they were set out to do, which was "educate the world". Instead they have become a free resource for life-time learners.
This is why Udacity abandoned their attempt to teach idiots math (I mean poor underprivileged members of society) and instead focused on applied technical training with their Nanodegree certifications. Coursera is offering their equivalent Specialization certificates and EdX their XSeries certificates. Now these certs are new but they have the advantage of having a major university name tied to them so I could see them being helpful on a resume.
Since these certs also cost money you get back to the question - why not just get college credit? That was my entire argument against taking MOOCs (especially the free ones) to begin with since you get to have all that "fun" of doing college level work with nothing to show for it. At least if you pay for a real course you get college credits you can apply towards a degree. Long term I see their certification programs being the equivalent of an undergraduate certificate or one semester of college.
The one caveat is - I do not think it would hurt to list that you took MOOC courses from schools like Harvard, Princeton and Yale on your resume.
MOOC courses only work on subjects that do not require writing papers since those are done through a "peer-review" system - effectively some other idiot taking the class is going to grade and review your paper. There is no way around this problem without a pay system since it is impossible for a professor and his TAs to grade papers from 100,000 students taking their free MOOC.
MOOC courses were also initially rolled out in the standard 12-week college format, which defeated the purpose of any improvement on completion time efficiency. They are slowly moving and offering more self-paced courses and shorter condensed courses averaging 4-8 weeks.
With all this being said MOOC courses are going to need the equivalent of an organization like ACE approving them for college credit (something ACE is working on) and then proctored exams to make them official (the cert programs currently require proctored exams). Without this it makes anyone claiming any sort of degree equivalent for taking MOOC courses laughably naive.
This is why Udacity abandoned their attempt to teach idiots math (I mean poor underprivileged members of society) and instead focused on applied technical training with their Nanodegree certifications. Coursera is offering their equivalent Specialization certificates and EdX their XSeries certificates. Now these certs are new but they have the advantage of having a major university name tied to them so I could see them being helpful on a resume.
Since these certs also cost money you get back to the question - why not just get college credit? That was my entire argument against taking MOOCs (especially the free ones) to begin with since you get to have all that "fun" of doing college level work with nothing to show for it. At least if you pay for a real course you get college credits you can apply towards a degree. Long term I see their certification programs being the equivalent of an undergraduate certificate or one semester of college.
The one caveat is - I do not think it would hurt to list that you took MOOC courses from schools like Harvard, Princeton and Yale on your resume.
MOOC courses only work on subjects that do not require writing papers since those are done through a "peer-review" system - effectively some other idiot taking the class is going to grade and review your paper. There is no way around this problem without a pay system since it is impossible for a professor and his TAs to grade papers from 100,000 students taking their free MOOC.
MOOC courses were also initially rolled out in the standard 12-week college format, which defeated the purpose of any improvement on completion time efficiency. They are slowly moving and offering more self-paced courses and shorter condensed courses averaging 4-8 weeks.
With all this being said MOOC courses are going to need the equivalent of an organization like ACE approving them for college credit (something ACE is working on) and then proctored exams to make them official (the cert programs currently require proctored exams). Without this it makes anyone claiming any sort of degree equivalent for taking MOOC courses laughably naive.