Massive open online courses have plenty of perks, their champions say. Among them: The classes are open to all and typically free.
The catch, and what seems to have limited their impact, is that they aren’t widely available for credit — at least yet.
Earlier this month, Arizona State University announced plans to make a handful of undergraduate massive open online courses, or MOOCs, available for credit to anyone who was interested. The initiative, which officials say is the first of its kind, would make it possible for students to take general education courses that they could then count toward an ASU degree or transfer to their institution of choice, effectively giving them a leg up on their freshman year.
[Learn about the impact of MOOCs on education.]
The announcement comes more than a year after Georgia Institute of Technology started offering an online computer science master’s program using a MOOC platform. University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign is also leading the trend, starting a low-cost online MBA program in partnership with Coursera in spring of 2016, which allows both students in and out of the program to earn credit.
Arizona State’s Global Freshman Academy, a partnership with MOOC-provider edX, will start this summer. By mid-October, the program plans to offer three general education courses: Introduction to Solar Systems Astronomy, Western Civilization: Ancient and Medieval Europe and Human Origins. Students who want to take a course for credit must first pay a $45 fee to have their identity verified. Assuming they finish and pass the courses, they can also pay another fee to earn credit that will appear on an Arizona State transcript, says Adrian Sannier, chief academic technology officer for ASU Online.
Students taking the MOOCs will be charged $200 per credit, or $600 for three-credit courses, Sannier says. While the courses aren’t free, like the early MOOCs, they are offered at a lower rate than the school’s online courses, which range from $484 per credit to $543 per credit hour, and less than the school’s on-campus courses. The courses have no test score or other admissions requirements. Students who don’t intend to earn credit can take the courses for free.
The program is meant to cater to three groups of students, Sannier says: high school students who are looking to boost their confidence or earn college credits, adults who are thinking about pursuing an online degree but who want to test the waters first and international students who want to earn credits or demonstrate their ability to succeed at a U.S. institution.
What makes Arizona State’s program unique, Sannier says, is its focus on undergraduate courses. To date, he says, most MOOC-based programs cater to graduate students.
Alex Bowers Schoen, a resident of Atlanta, Georgia, has just completed her first year of Georgia Tech’s program. She says she was drawn to the program for its quality, its flexibility and its cost. Like ASU’s program, Georgia Tech offers discounted tuition. Online master’s students can complete the courses for $6,600 — compared with the $45,000 charged to out-of-state, on-campus students.
[Explore why the end of California’s digital campus is a blow for MOOCs.]
But unlike ASU, the program has strict admissions requirements, says Rafael Bras, Georgia Tech provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.
While massive open online courses have been criticized for providing little interaction between students and instructors, Bowers Schoen says she has more than enough access to professors and teaching assistants.
“I’ve taken online courses and they have been pretty much like ‘Read the book and watch these lectures,'” she says. “These professors are so dedicated to the online format. They are very communicative.”
One reason the for-credit MOOCs may feel more intimate is because, unlike the first MOOCs, these programs have a revenue model that allows them to hire additional instructors. At the University of Illinois, for example, online MBA students will pay a discounted rate of $250 per credit hour. The first class will be capped at 200, but students will be divided into sections of 50 that are tied to a teaching assistant, says Norma Scagnoli, director of e-learning for the university’s business school.
While exciting for prospective students, for-credit MOOCs are so new that those taking the courses should exercise a bit of caution, says Deborah Seymour, an expert on alternative degree paths for nontraditional students at the American Council on Education, an advocacy group for colleges and universities.
[Learn about the State Department’s ‘MOOC camp’ for online learners.]
While it’s likely that credits from respected programs at places like Arizona State would be accepted at other schools, she says it’s still worthwhile for students to make sure their credits will transfer or, in the case of master’s programs, be considered legitimate in the eyes of a doctorate program. Ultimately, it’s up to individual schools to decide what kinds of credits they will accept.
“If a student is taking a MOOC for credit they should first make sure they can get credit for that MOOC,” she says. “Always reach out to the institution to which you are transferring to inquire in advance for an estimate of credits they will accept from the other institution.”
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