I decided to go back to school this January and chose to attend Harvard, Duke, Holy Cross, UNC, Indiana, Ohio and San Jose State for my Freshmen year (which ends in three weeks). And I plan to spend my Sophomore year (which will run through June) at Yale, Wesleyan, and the California Institute of Technology.
In other words, I’ve decided to push the MOOC (Massively Open Online Course) phenomenon to its limit and see if it’s possible to obtain the equivalent of a Bachelors Degree in just twelve months.
MOOCs have been in the news all year, alongside stories of other emerging online options or alternatives to traditional public or private K-12 and college education.
This is part of the wild growth (some would say speculation) in the educational sector as the “Next Big Thing” with startups starting up and investors investing in hope that Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers was right when he said in 2001 that “E-Learning is the next killer app: it will make email look like a rounding error.”
True, some of the initial shine on MOOCs has worn off, to the point where we are already seeing signs of a backlash. Still, the problems MOOCs and other investment-fueled entrepreneurial projects are trying to solve are real, with some of the most glaring examples being:
- the skyrocketing cost of obtaining a college diploma
- questionable results from decades of public education reform
- widening achievement gaps between haves and have-nots in an economy with lessening room for those without some kind of advanced degree
Now it may turn out that massive online courses are just a stepping stone to whatever option or options emerge to provide a viable alternative to traditional institutional learning. But while we cannot say for certain what it means that millions of students around the world are enrolling in such courses, I think it’s safe to say that it doesn’t mean nothing.
The problem is that much of the discussion around MOOCs (and similar online learning resources) has gotten ahead of the phenomena itself by focusing on how students can obtain credit for participating in such courses, rather than zeroing in on what is taught and (more importantly) learned through the MOOC experience.
Beyond policy makers, investors, entrepreneurs and journalists talking about the MOOC phenomenon in abstract terms, the amount of first-hand experience regarding this supposed brave new world has come in the form of stories from individuals who have taken or taught a specific online course. What’s lacking amongst this high-level analysis and anecdotal data is the experience of someone ready to take the plunge and see how far one can actually get trying to recreate a quality college experience using the new free online tools.
Which is why I decided to get on the diving board (or, perhaps, walk the plank).
This Degree of Freedom blog will chronicle my one-year effort to learn the equivalent of a Bachelor’s entirely through free online classes. The “degree” I will be pursuing will be in liberal arts (I plan to “major” in philosophy), which itself should open up some interesting conversations, given that MOOCs are just beginning to branch out from their initial focus on popular computer science subjects.
The entire course load for this project will involve taking the equivalent of 32 liberal arts college courses between now and the end of 2013, a number large enough to allow me to sample the product from every MOOC provider currently making headlines, as well as a number of other alternatives for free quality college-level content that don’t get this same level of coverage.
Starting next week, I’ll outline my course plan and give you a sense of what you can expect from following this Degree of Freedom project throughout the year.
Will you actually get a degree at the end? If so, from where?
While my primary goal is to learn a BA’s worth of material, I also plan to do a deep dive later in the year into what it takes to get college credit for one or more MOOC courses, and determine how practical it would be to follow these steps to get an “official” degree. Depending on what I discover, I’ll make the decision as to whether or not to do what it takes to turn this year of work into an institutionally recognized BA of some kind.
Hi, did you managed to successfully transfer your MOOC credits into a bachelors degree.
Please update me on this. I am very keen to earn a free bachelors degree through mooc that is if its possible at all. I have just completed my A levels
Did you managed to transfer your credits into a bachelors degree?
Good luck….. I will be following you on your journey.
It’s an interesting project.
However, whether your evaluation to the MOOCs is accurate will rely on many factors. Here are some I can think of.
If you have already had a higher education degree (BA, MA, PhD), then you probably can get your second BA degree relatively easily. But how about if you have a BA and working towards a MA?
Also, are you going to study in a discipline that you have no knowledge at all? Taking a liberal art degree with a sciences background? Or the other ways around? I think the result will be quite different. If you are going into an entirely new field, I’m quite interested in finding out what the result will be.
How many times are you available for ur BA? Are you work as if the full time students who can devote most of your times on studying?
Without taking these aspects into consideration, your evaluation of the MOOCs will not be accurate. So the question and the answer are not simply whether you can get a BA in 12 months or not.
These are all excellent questions and I hope to answer a number of them over the course of this week.
Obviously there is something a bit artificial about compressing so much programming into such a short amount of time (most people who pursue this avenue will spread it out over 3-4 years). But the goal of this project is to expose myself to as much real-world experience in the MOOC world as possible and see what insights derive from trying to learn all I can from what are currently being presented as alternatives or supplements to traditional classroom education.
Just as an FYI, my original BA was in a science subject (chemistry), and I’ve worked in the computer field professionally. So getting a BA in philosophy does represent learning new material.
I look forward to further questions as this project proceeds. Thanks for tuning in.
As someone who knew you during your 1st BA, I look forward with great interest to reading how this 2nd one goes – Best of luck and kudos for researching an area of such potential and promise.
We’ll see if it’s easier or harder now that I only have two charges to RA between classes 😉 Great hearing from you!
I enjoy MOOCs, I have 21 certificates, but a full BA of material is going to be hard to find. Most college courses are 16 weeks with 1000 pages of reading and a long research paper, while a MOOC on the same subject may be 6 weeks with a few short readings and a 500 page paper.
If it were possible to do 32 college-level courses in one year, lots of people would be doing that to cut down on the huge tuition debt!
But enjoy the journey, 32 MOOCs in one year is a lot, but it’s doable, and fun. And a few courses are recommended by ACE for colleges to give credit – mostly STEM courses I think, and you have to be enrolled in the college that gives credit. Still, who knows how much things might change in the near future?
Go for it, I’d love another bachelor degree or two, maybe you can blaze the trail.
Well I’m late to the game, but I am super excited about MOOCs. I am interested in taking them in my free time just to learn subjects I haven’t gotten around to so I’m not really concerned about receiving any credit for them. However, I believe a self motivated person, using MOOCs to learn a field are probably a better bet than your average college student. I have a few college degrees and from what I can tell, employers want experience in the field already. I have had to take jobs that I was either over qualified for or very low pay to get ahead in my field (I say this loosely because I am still not “ahead”). I can’t wait to read about your journey!
Also, is it a stretch to read “MOOC” as mooch and therefore anybody partaking in a MOOC could then be called a MOOCer?
Well fair enough. I will have completed 17 MOOC courses (14 completed, 3 winding up). Your theory that 32 courses are equivalent to a four-year degree is relying on each of these courses being the academic equivalent of their bricks and mortar counterpart. In the case of Coursera I do not believe it is as straight cut as that. Probably 40 or more courses might come close. The reason is that although some courses last as long as their real world counterparts 8,9,10 weekds and cover most of the coursework, others do not and with a glut of 4 week courses now, they mean even less. So could be a difference of credit value of 1 or 2 college hours. Even assuming that a course can be the equivalent of 3 college hours, you’d need 41-42 courses to equal a 124-128 credit hour degree. Problem here is that the 4 and 6 week MOOC’s are clearly not the equivalent of 3 credit hours. How many college credit hours for instance would you give for ‘The Music of the Beatles’? [1 if even!] So a rough guess would mean you’d have to complete about 50 Coursera courses minimum to have the equivalent of a BA, perhaps as much as 60 courses. I think it would be more realistic then to consider the equivalence of a 2 year Associates and build on that. In saying that if a student collects say 24-30 courses they’d have about the equivalent of a AA/AS depending what they ‘major’ in. I think your counting is a little off. So I think realistically you can complete a 4 year BA in about 1.5-2 years, at least under the Coursera platform, but you’d need to chalk up 50-60 courses.
I think that’s a pretty reasonable calculation. As I mentioned in a piece I wrote when I finished my “degree” (http://degreeoffreedom.org/one-year-ba-prosecution/), it was clear that the work I did last year, while certainly more than a year of college-level effort, was certainly less than I remember doing over the course of four years when I originally attended school. (Note though that a piece that follows the one I just linked to offers an explanation of why my One Year BA MOOC could be seen as the equivalent of a four year residential one.)
Since we’ve both been through university, I think what we must agree on here is that MOOC’s are definitely not the same as regular College courses. I feel they can’t be counted the same, since there is no ‘stadard’ for them. Some Coursera courses are frankly pathetic.
I mentioned ‘The music of the Beatles’ as an example of what is wrong with Coursera. I’ll use that as an example, since that course stared I’ve POINTEDLY ticked ALL the boxes in the quiz, in the tick all appies questions, and ticked ‘b’ second option for the multiple choice. This week I scored 8.75/10 from just ticking all the boxes, not having bothered to read the questions ast all. Now on the second attempt I naturally scored 10/10 since I now knew all of the answers. Truth is I knew none of the answers. See what I am saying here? That is not university level study, no matter how much we pretend that it is.
Others (but very few of them) are honestly Freshman coursework. I count about 2 maybe 3 out of my 17 Coursera courses that I considered to be College level work, but Community College level coursework.
This raises a further issue, in that there is typically no ‘Upper Level’ coursework. At this time, I don’t believe that a BA is possible, due to the lack of advanced coursework. So in that respect, I humbly accept that when I get to 24-30 certificates, I’ll probably have achieved the equivalent of an Associates. Aftr which I may put together another one. Until such time that more advanced work becomes available, that’s pretty much how it’s going to be. sorry we can’t agree on this. I respect what you are doing, however at this time MOOC’s are jsut not good enough to do this with. Perhaps EdX and Futurelearn are the way ahead. Coursera is probably not moving in the right direction.
Meant to add, it’s like the ITT Tech commercial which comes on late in the evenings. The smallprint on the screen, that they are probably legally obliged to admit to, tells us straight that the credits from that ‘institution’ probably won’t transfer. [Even the word ‘probably’, which they use, is being generous. Likely that even if you did get some credit for them it would be downgraded.] Counting down might be a safer approach for MOOC’s then, eg, if you completed the MOOC equivalent of a 3 credit hour real world course, downgrade it to 2 credits. Just a thought anyway.
Speaking of MOOCs, college credits and degrees, I just stumbled upon “online tuition-free universities”. Two of them are the World Education University ( theweu.com) and University of the People (uopeople.edu). Now these so-called universities are claiming to grant degrees! I have no idea how legit these are – I have taken a few MOOCs from Coursera and edX, but this is just something I couldn’t contain myself from being skeptical about. The WEU offers 100% free education but then seems to be ambiguously demanding something in return (“a promise to give back”), which made me more suspicious. And the UoP seems to have an application fee and exam fee but that’s it. I can’t seem to find any information on it online. Seems too good to be true. Has anyone else heard of such a thing?!
UOP is a bit fishy. I looked at their site some time back, but felt a bit concerned about an organization outside of the US asking for a copy of my passport just to sign up with their website Fishy and weird. WEU plan to sell the information gathered on students to companies. They look look like a complete fraud.
Thanks for your reply, David. I knew they were too good to be true but what I don’t understand is why such ‘universities’ are even allowed to exist. I googled about UoPs founder and he seemed to be claiming he’s a social entrepreneur which is how investors even pay for endeavors such as these. Seems like a lie to me too. They even have free time to work to make it seem real. Heh.