American Council on Education Recommends 5 MOOCs for Credit - Technology - The Chronicle of Higher Education

abernard102@gmail.com 2013-02-08

Summary:

In what could be a major step toward bridging the gap between massive open online courses and the credentialing system that they are supposed to 'disrupt,' the American Council on Education on Thursday endorsed five MOOCs for credit. Two of the approved courses, 'Introduction to Genetics and Evolution' and 'Bioelectricity: A Quantitative Approach,' come from Duke University. Two others, 'Pre-Calculus' and 'Algebra,' come from the University of California at Irvine. The last, 'Calculus: Single-Variable,' comes from the University of Pennsylvania. All five are offered through Coursera. The council, an association that advises college presidents, operates a credit-recommendation service that evaluates individual courses. If a course passes muster, ACE advises its 1,800 member colleges that they can be comfortable conferring credit on students who have passed that course. Whether colleges take the council's advice, however, is an open question. 'Ultimately, the degree-granting institution decides what credits to accept,' said Cathy A. Sandeen, the council's vice president for education attainment and innovation. In other words, the council's endorsement alone does not mean students can expect to save money by redeeming their Coursera certificates—evidence that they have passed its courses—for credit toward a traditional degree. But if some colleges follow through, the council's recommendations could go a long way toward straightening the crooked path from free college courses to valuable college credits. Simplifying that process could make the economic significance of MOOCs more tangible. 'This could make it much easier for students to get credit for MOOCs, and they don't necessarily have to figure out the complicated, back-roads way of doing so,' said Amy Laitinen, deputy director for higher education at the New America Foundation, a research organization in Washington. 'Making it easier is a big step toward making it happen at scale...'"

Link:

http://chronicle.com/article/American-Council-on-Education/137155/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.comment oa.universities oa.oer oa.duke.u oa.students oa.education oa.colleges oa.coursera oa.u.penn oa.u.california oa.announcements oa.moocs oa.ace oa.hei oa.courseware

Date tagged:

02/08/2013, 13:40

Date published:

02/08/2013, 08:40