12-04-2012, 05:10 PM
[I apologize if this has already been addressed. I did a search and only found a couple entries on MOOCS but they were fairly old.]
For those of you unfamiliar with MOOCS, Massive Open Online Courses, they are online courses that are offered by top-tier universities such as Stanford, MIT, Brown, etc., via sites like OpenCourseWare and Coursera. The courses are completely free, but you don't get credit for taking them. However, that may be about to change.
Coursera is currently in the process of putting together a pilot program to get ACE to accredit some of their courses. Here is a New York Times article that goes in to more detail, but the gist of the article is that you would be able to take an ACE approved course through Coursera, take a web based proctored exam after the course, and receive ACE credit if you pass. This credit can then be transferred to any college that accepts ACE credit (e.g. the big 3 and over 2,000 other colleges). There would be some kind of fee for these courses, but the article doesn't specify how much.
It looks like the number of courses will be fairly limited to start, but the future looks promising for web based college courses. Coursera is supposed to be announcing more details after the first of the year. They also have a webpage were you can give them your email address if you would like them to send you updates on this program.
For those of you unfamiliar with MOOCS, Massive Open Online Courses, they are online courses that are offered by top-tier universities such as Stanford, MIT, Brown, etc., via sites like OpenCourseWare and Coursera. The courses are completely free, but you don't get credit for taking them. However, that may be about to change.
Coursera is currently in the process of putting together a pilot program to get ACE to accredit some of their courses. Here is a New York Times article that goes in to more detail, but the gist of the article is that you would be able to take an ACE approved course through Coursera, take a web based proctored exam after the course, and receive ACE credit if you pass. This credit can then be transferred to any college that accepts ACE credit (e.g. the big 3 and over 2,000 other colleges). There would be some kind of fee for these courses, but the article doesn't specify how much.
It looks like the number of courses will be fairly limited to start, but the future looks promising for web based college courses. Coursera is supposed to be announcing more details after the first of the year. They also have a webpage were you can give them your email address if you would like them to send you updates on this program.
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