Isaac Asimov, in 1988, gave an interview in which he talked about how this kind of thing would change education. If you didn't know that this was from 1988, you might think it was from last week--that's how well he nailed it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJAIERgWhZQ
From the age of dinosaurs? Gosh am I old. I like how the interviewer asks about learning baseball. After "Moneyball", we now having additional interesting problems from which kids can learn. Build your fantasy teams and run the probabilities.
As someone who works in higher education, I'm most excited about this:
"...operate on an open-source, scalable software infrastructure in order to make it continuously improving and readily available to other educational institutions."
In my opinion, today's course management systems go from pretty bad to worse. In using blackboard, moodle, and another platform called itslearning, these platforms suffer from major usability issues. I'm really looking forward to using a CMS I don't hate, students don't mind using, and which man be can modified at an institutional level. This could I think be the part of this announcement that has the biggest impact: helping to make online learning easier for everyone at a variety of institutions across the globe.
This is a real game changer for those of us outside the US. My kids are 11 and 13 now. This looks like a huge opportunity growing for them. It will no longer matter that they will be far from a world-class university.
I would totally hire people who could prove the knowledge and dedication necessary for the work at hand, wherever they come from and whether or not they could afford to go to a big-name University from the 1st world or not.
This free education trend is a game changer for kids in formerly "safe" rich countries, and I see it as unstoppable.
"[...]it appears from the FAQ page that it will be possible to undertake the open course and then pay a “modest” fee to demonstrate mastery of the subject matter and be credentialled with an MIT award."
I guess the value of that will depend on how those certificates are perceived. If you're hiring a coder who is entirely self taught, and you see a few of these certificates in the kind of basic CS areas that are often lacking among entirely self taught programmers, it might sway a hiring decision a bit one way or the other.
Very interesting. This is potentially one of the most disruptive moves I've seen come out of a university in a long time.
The size of impact that this has on higher education is fully dependent upon how successful their credentialing scheme is implemented and executed. Very curious to see how this unfolds.
If you're crediting MIT in your comment, then I feel your credit is misplaced. MIT is reacting to Stanford successfully completing a semester of a very similar initiative. MIT's initiative is incredibly generous, and looks awesome, but I think it's reactionary to Stanford's ___-class.org work.
'Reactionary' is a bit of a strong word. I think that this is an idea whose time has come and that both MIT and Stanford had these kinds of initiatives in the pipeline for a while. Stanford's success might have spurred MIT on a bit, but I'm sure they would have been on this path eventually anyway.
I just hope that other schools start moving in this direction and perhaps some standards or at least conventions start to take shape.
For example: it would be useful if there were tagged video classes and materials so that if I am confused by the presentation by one lecturer I could look up a lecture on the same topic by someone else. I find that seeing a topic from a slightly different perspective is enormously helpful.
This seems like a natural extension of MIT's OCW which has been going for 10 years now. It may be influenced by Stanford's recent clases, but "reactionary" is a bit of a stretch. MIT has been giving away free classes online for a long time, adding credentials seems like an obvious extension of that, and one that would have likely happened regardless of what Stanford does.
I agree. And I agree it seems like a natural extension, however it's not the idea that's impressive, the action itself is impressive. There are a lot of forces that make this step incredibly difficult for universities, hence why it has taken so long.
Naturally they have to be very cautious of how they market and execute on any alternative credentialing system, both due to the new system being in competition with the traditional, and to ensure the branding will (or can) not tarnish their name.
Interesting that (from the MITx FAQ) they will provide the classes free of charge but will charge for certification. Has a thread of similarity to an open-source business model. :)
It's always a good business model move to make your revenue from something that can't be pirated or copied. No-one's going to be torrenting the certificates, after all.
