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What are universities offering courses in Graphic Design/3D animation?

What incentives do universities have for offering free courses through Coursera, Udacity, and other MOOCs?

  • Major universities are signing up in droves to offer courses through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). One might think that doing so could dilute their brands by making their offerings less scarce. So what business case do they have for offering free courses online?

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    I really don't think that universities have sat down and figured out an answer to the incentive question themselves, so it's a bit hard to speculate on their behalf. I will however have a go at speculating an answer as to why it is happening. Being part of a higher education institution myself, I have discovered two very distinct and equally powerful drivers - the passionate teachers who care about sharing their knowledge and helping individuals in the learning process and the administrators who care about the reputation and sustainability of their institutions. I believe that the push to place free courses from the universities into the MOOC space is being 100% driven by the passionate teachers with the administrators going along with it simply because it's possibly the only sensible response to the unstoppable learning tsunami quantified by Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig with their free AI course. It's hard to believe the institutions are excited about voluntarily giving away for free what they have sold for tens of thousands of dollars for decades. The incumbent is rarely the promoter of such fundamental change so you have to wonder why they are doing this. I think that the institutional administrators have little option but to support these passionate teachers hoping that a commercial model eventually emerges from the MOOCs that protects the institute's reputation without cannibalizing their on-campus enrollment and existing revenue streams. They hope that their on-campus experience, that helps individuals transition from 18-22 year-olds, will be of sufficient value to maintain the current numbers at the current price. They also see that if they don't support these passionate teachers within the institution then there are a growing number of venture capitalists who would be happy to underwrite the teacher's course development off campus and online.For example, if 160,000 AI students from Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig's course could be persuaded to pay just $20 to download the accompanying course worksheets/activities, you can see the commercial win for the teacher and the venture capitalist but possibly at the expense of the institution. In response, these passionate teachers who are pushing content into the MOOC space, argue that they are sharing information and helping learners who are not currently part of the existing market for university products - like the 22-102 year olds, international students and the smart retired. Still, anyone who has studied Schumpeter and Christensen will note the elements of "Creative Destruction"and "Disruptive Innovation" being unwittingly introduced by these passionate teachers. These theories explain that a paradigm shift to a new platform that destroys the old, begins with a groundswell of acceptance of a lesser quality but vastly cheaper product by the masses of people who are not currently served by the existing offer. With 4.2 billion working aged people on the planet currently denied access to higher education due to cost and geographic constraints, its easy to see how these free and easily accessible MOOCs will grow exponentially in acceptance in the years ahead. These theories go on to explain that eventually the sheer weight of numbers in the new innovation attracts the best resources (teachers, industry experts, content) until even the privileged 5% of people on the planet who currently seek a college education via the existing university models, switch to the new model and in doing so destroy the revenue streams of the old. It's easy to see how the new super cheap price points of the new paradigm could support a teacher working virtually, but it's harder to see how institutions with their massive physical footprint and overheads could maintain their economic sustainability. The following article supports my view that neither Coursera nor the universities have figured out the motorization strategy yet but it's clear that there is an intention to do so at some point, possibly in an innovative way that has not yet been discovered. (Think Adsense at Google) http://chronicle.com/article/How-an-Upstart-Company-Might/133065/ The 8 possible motorization strategies documented in the Coursera agreement include: certification, secure assessment, employee recruitment, employee screening, human tutoring/manual grading, corporate enterprise model, sponsorship, tuition fees. See the agreement here https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/400864-coursera-fully-executed-agreement.html#document/p40 In summary, I don't believe that the university administrators are pursuing a well thought out business case in regard to free education. I'm sure they also see the cannibalizing threat of participating in the new innovation but they also see the commercial threat of their key resource (passionate teachers), supported by venture capitalists, leaving the institution and developing their own commercial learning models at a fraction of the price of the existing university models. Caught between a rock and a hard place, institutions are choosing to protect their short term cash flow option (by keep their passionate teachers in-house for now) in the hope that something will emerge in the new paradigm that will enhance the university's reputation and ensure its survival. I personally think institutions are operating on false hope and agree with 's view that "this generation may be the last to experience Higher Education as we know it."

Peter Baskerville at Quora Visit the source

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Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) initiatives have been recently embarked upon by several top U.S. universities, with prominent examples of MOOCs including edX, Coursera, and Udacity – all of which share a common goal of making higher education accessible to anyone in the world for free. The answers posted by other Quora users provide insights into instructor and institutional incentives driving these efforts. For the universities participating in the Academic Financial Trading Platform (http://www.academictrader.org), including Carnegie Mellon, the University of Chicago, and the London School of Economics, the goal is two-fold: 1) to contribute to the business education of individuals around the world by providing them with an improved understanding of the economy and financial markets and 2) to empower individuals to use and apply the latest and most cutting-edge stock market prediction techniques developed at top universities in their investment decisions. The associated incentives are as follows: 1) Faculty at AFTP universities recognize that the higher education landscape of the future, especially in the business disciplines, will rely heavily on online delivery of course materials, and that early adoption of such technology is essential to maintain a leadership position in business education and 2) AFTP faculty members are motivated by the desire to increase public awareness of the practical applications of their research to real-world financial decision-making. For example, university stock market prediction techniques are currently known to only an elite group of financial experts, and their uptake by the average Internet user – with associated economic benefits to the general public – would constitute the highest measure of success in a faculty member’s research impact. To my knowledge, AFTP is currently the only MOOC that delivers the power of university research directly into the hands of Internet users. Hence, associated faculty are driven both by educational and research incentives.

Raj Chakrabarti

Drawing on no real evidence or research, but rather my personal opinion, I think that MOOCs and brick and mortar university courses can happily co-exist, just like social networking platforms do not replace face-to-face social interaction.  I think schools recognize this fact and don't look at MOOCs as a threat, but rather a chance for their school to market their teachers, courses, and programs, appear willing to engage in new technologies, take chances, and embrace change in learning platforms.  Image and reputation are HUGE in higher education.  Additionally, the teachers get an opportunity to reach people around the world like never before and continue to grow themselves through crowdsourced feedback about their teaching styles and lesson plans, content, and learning outcomes. As someone who will be considering graduate school in a few years, I can honestly say that, in addition to taking Coursera courses to engage myself intellectually, I wil keep a close eye on which school or professors I enjoyed the most, which in turn may influence my application decisions, not dissuade them all together.  It may happen one day, and we'll have to see how the technology progresses in this regard, but I think MOOCs have a long way to go to replace the social, networking, immersive, personal, and constructive experience of a brick and mortar degree program, whether it be undergraduate or graduate. But I expect (and hope, for their sake..) bottom-tier and online schools like UoP or Argosy are scrambling and devising a plan right now.  As these MOOCs become more popular and well-regarded, earning enough certificates in one subject area may mimic the benfit of a "degree" in intellectual and eventually employment-related contexts. Why pay a bunch of money to go to a bottom-tier or online school when you can take classes taught my top-level professors for free?  But hey, this is natural selection.

Bryce Benton

I don't think they will be any incentive for a university to offer MOOC. However, I think it will be a good platform to help the university to promote their course. Besides that, this will also be a great opportunity to promote the idea of equal education opportunity to all those who is willing to study but could not afford it. At last, I think the biggest beneficial from MOOC will be the student who sign up for the course.

Yew Seng Wei

Students don't necessarily go to college just for the knowledge they gain by sitting in lecture halls. College is an "experience" and an opportunity for personal growth as well as professional learning. I don't think online courses taken here and there, offered for free, will ever replace the true college experience, nor should it. But for some students who may not get the option to attend college, these MOOCs do empower learners and provide opportunities for those who are lifelong learners. Those who are concerned with cheating probably still teach with multiple choice assessments. They are missing the boat completely.

Jolynn Ray

It is invalid to think that universities exist solely as commercial enterprises. The folks driving the online education revolution like Anant Agarwal, G. J. Sussman etc. are essentially educators and not in the field for business motives. They see themselves as empowering hordes of online students who will increase well being in the world by being better educated.

Vivek Nagarajan

Here I offer my two cents and reasons that differ from some of the very credible and insightful answers by others. I see the below motivation factors : a) MOOCs are a good way to free up the Professor's time. A one-time effort is all that is required and a whole lot more students can be taught the subject in a short time. b) MOOC certifications provide prospective employers a new source of candidates (consider the Comp. Sci. industry in US where supply for Computer Scientists/Developers etc. is much less than the demand). The employers are willing to pay money to these MOOC companies to get a chance to interview their students. This makes it a financially viable business! ...These are just some examples I could think of , will add more later.

Mohit Deopujari

Gentelmen : Coursera + Udacity are for profit companies. They are doing a very good job of marketing low price online education . EDX , Harvard+MIT + Berkeley are non-profits. They do not expect any profits from this initiative. Therefore they go very slowly, selecting their partners and courses being offerred . Also edx courses are the same as oncampus courses . Also they adhere the quarter system of the universities. They have start and finish dates according to quarters at Universities . ONLINE is effective and low priced if it has a scale . That is more than 10,000 students per quarter. Just imagine a course is charged only $ 10 . 10,000 students at all quarters for 10 quarters then income is   10 quarters x 10,000 students x $ 10 = $ 1,000,000  What is the cost of best online course in the world . MIT has understood that in 2001. MIT has now 100,000,000 students and teachers around the world with its opencourseware project . To attract  thousands online must be offerred by best schools of the world , it must be global, then it is low priced too . edx also has the potential to improve the quality of their online courses in time . Therefore please do not compare edx with Coursera and Udacity. They are two different poles .

Muvaffak Gozaydin

Jonathan Brown

These initiatives are, for the most part, learning experiences for the universities involved.  There is institutional pressure not to be too late to get into the game, but there isn't a proven business case, or operating model yet.

Raymond Cooper

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