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Universities may be at risk as modern learners ditch the classroom

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By Richard Smart for The Journal (ACCJ)

Back in 2012, the US writer Clay Shirky sounded a warning to academics: pay attention to MOOCs or face the consequences.

Massive open online courses, better known by their acronym MOOCs, emerged in 2008, but were beginning to go mainstream when Shirky warned of their impact on more traditional education.

“Once you imagine educating a thousand people in a single class,” Shirky wrote, “it becomes clear that open courses, even in their nascent state, will be able to raise quality and improve certification faster than traditional institutions can lower cost or increase enrollment.”

Open courses, freely available online for an unlimited number of students, were to Shirky the latest in a line of Internet innovations that was set to disrupt an industry.

As the MP3 had facilitated massive changes in the way we listen to music, and the torrent had transformed the movie industry, the MOOC would force academic institutions to adapt or die, he argued.

Many pointed out at the time that there were holes in Shirky’s argument. Teaching 1,000 people comes at a cost of quality. And students in such large groups are often expected to assess themselves.

There is little time for the one-on-one mentoring and private consultations with academics that provide so much value to students.

That, however, does not mean MOOCs have no value. It is simply that Shirky overstated their threat to traditional academia.

MOOCs are perhaps best considered separate to traditional academia. While they may influence university policies and teaching methods, their courses are aimed at a different customer base and more on-the-job-training-focused.

While stressing life skills and critical thought less, at base they are designed to pursue profit rather than knowledge. Shirky, however, has a point.

Healthy space

Today, companies such as Coursera and Udemy are going strong. Japan has its own nonprofit council—JMOOC—looking to expand and change education here. And reality has bitten: much of what we talk about when discussing MOOCs today is simply online education. Many businesses have found that, to make money, they need smaller class sizes and to be paid for their efforts.

“The definition [of MOOCs] has been co-opted over time to mean online education,” says Shannon Hughes, head of marketing at Udemy. Her company offers more than 35,000 courses and has 9 million students enrolled.

“What we are seeing now—as we do more to localize our product and get instructors who teach in local languages—is that markets just come online,” Hughes says. “That’s definitely what we have seen in Japan as we have attracted more courses on the site.”

The company, which charges students on a per-course basis and creates its programs in-house, has attracted investment from venture capital funds such as 500 Startups.

“We had been impressed by the opportunities in online video education, and were believers it was a global story that would scale,” Dave McClure, founder of the fund, told The Journal. “I also worked at PayPal with friends who later became the founders of YouTube, and have always been a fan of the potential for combining online video and education.”

Typical students of these courses, according to Hughes, are 30-somethings or 40-somethings looking for career progression by keeping up with the latest technologies or advances in their industry.

A smaller set of students tends to focus on personal development by learning skills in areas such as meditation or photography. “There is a lot of urgency around people who come to us to prepare for job interviews or who are looking to advance their careers,” she says.

“At the same time, there are people learning on Udemy for their passions.” Other organizations have different ways of getting students to part with their money. While Udemy charges for courses, Coursera charges for the certifications students may need to prove they have completed certain studies.

“While access to a lot of course content is free, we do ask learners to pay a fee for certificates for both single courses and Specializations, multi-course series that teach specific skills in depth,” according to Coursera.

“A [certificate] is a way of declaring that someone has successfully completed all assignments and examinations of a course, after verifying a learner’s identity with facial recognition and keystroke analysis.”

The company, which last year received an endorsement from US President Barack Obama, does not produce its courses in-house, instead partnering with major academic institutions.

“We think that having great instructors from great institutions doing the teaching is a powerful way to achieve educational results,” the company says.

Mutual benefits

As in many other industries, education has found itself in a trade-off with technology. Universities offer their services to Coursera in exchange for massive reach: three-quarters of its more than 16 million students are from outside the United States.

The company has a large presence in China, India, and Brazil, and 48 percent of its students are from the developing world, where economic growth and improved literacy mean large opportunities.

In Japan, growth has been slower to take off. “While many of the major universities in Japan have tried MOOCs, it will probably take a while before that becomes the norm,” says James Riney, head of 500 Startups Japan. “That said, independent learning-style MOOCs, where Udemy plays, may pick up sooner.”

Academics working in Tokyo agree. Ted O’Neill, director of PR for the Japan Association for Language Teaching, believes that MOOCs will eventually catch on, citing the intense competition between universities to attract students.

“I think there will be some faculty who will be under pressure to put together MOOCs as advertising for their universities,” he tells The Journal. “And we will see some who experiment with MOOCs to experiment with being a learner again.”

In his own field of interest—language—he feels MOOCs have limited use. “I have used tools like this for learning Japanese, and they aren’t going to help me write emails or speak up in meetings,” he says. “So I can’t see MOOCs helping with these areas.”

Nevertheless, Japan is seeing some movement in online education.

REVOLUTION COMING?

Yoshimi Fukuhara has an office in Meiji University’s swish new Global Front building on its Surugadai campus in East Tokyo. He is working to bring large-scale online learning to Japan with JMOOC.

So far, his association has helped 102 courses get up and running, and attracted enrollment from 455,000 people since launching in 2013. But Fukuhara has bigger ideas.

“We still need to get more content,” he tells The Journal. “I think we will get there, though. We have about 100 courses now. “We need to get up to 500 or so, then students will be able to study whatever they want. Getting there earlier would be better, but I expect it will take about three years.”

JMOOC, for Fukuhara, offers Japan a chance to improve both its traditional education model and its standing with the international community.

“Overseas, work on open education began around 2001, and the first courses became available in 2003,” he says. “Over time, there has been a paradigm shift. The approach of institutions has gone from being teacher-centric to being focused on learners. Lecturers have learned how to put more emphasis on their students, so they are learning, too.

“There is a lot to learn in terms of communication and activities. So, in Japan, we need to also look to change the way people think. So far, there has been no revolution.”

Fukuhara rues pre-MOOC era teaching methods, according to which the teacher tells students what to write and they simply do so. For him, and many others interviewed for this article, education has to adapt to the realities of the modern world: the pace of change is increasing, so skills learned at the age of 25 are likely to be worth little at the age of 45.

Such issues demand a new method of educating, which many believe MOOCs offer. But, does that not mean companies such as Udemy and Coursera—which are well funded and heavily registered—have an edge over organizations in countries such as Japan? “Our idea is to expand in Asia, with collaborations in places in Thailand and South Korea,” Fukuhara says, pointing out that the courses are made by Japanese, in Japanese, at his organization.

“The merit of our content is that it originates in Japan. Things that are made in Japan can give insights into the way Japan does business. A lot of Japanese factories are located in Southeast Asia, and the people in those countries want to study Japanese language and customs. So we want to work with MOOCs on courses in those countries.”

Ambition alone may not be enough for JMOOC. It has no financial help from the government, and is reliant on membership fees from companies and institutions involved. Membership costs ¥500,000, while special sponsors pay ¥5 million. Moving from a relative shoestring budget to a full-fledged global competitor also has another problem: Japan’s larger neighbor, China.

In the first half of 2015, deals were signed in China’s education technology sector worth $317 million. And Coursera is among the companies moving into the market.

“Coursera partners with five institutions in China which, collectively, offer more than 70 courses [to 1 million students],” the company says.

“Because of our Global Translator Community, we are able to offer more than 125 courses in Chinese, either [led by a native speaker or with subtitles]. For Hughes at Udemy, however, there is reason to believe that both the global and Japanese markets still have plenty of room for growth.

“The need for people to learn new skills is not going away anytime soon,” she says. “That is becoming increasingly important for being successful. I’m confident that won’t change over time.”

Custom Media publishes The Journal for the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan.

© Japan Today

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.


21 Comments
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Coursera offers a lot of courses, but they are not all for free.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Honestly, the education system we have currently is a huge sham anyway. In my grandmother's generation a teacher could get a job with a highschool diploma and some training. My mom's generation required a college degree. My generation I would need a master's degree for them to consider me.

All it's doing is increasing the debt and age of availability of the up coming generation without necessarily increasing the quality of worker.

Personally, I would be all for a huge overhaul of the education system:

1) Make it free and if necessary make it more difficult. It's not that expensive when compared to all the other monumental wastes of tax money. If a person has the drive and is wiling to expend their free time educating themselves we should reward them. That said it shouldn't be an instant pass- it should be challenging so that when they become a doctor they have truly earned it.

2) At high school begin pushing students to figure out what their skills are and help them figure out what field they'll be going into. Include more practical skill training- there is no shame in becoming a carpenter or hairdresser.

3) Make college level education have much more on-the-job training. FAR too often you'll hear people say they learned such and such in college/highschool and have absolutely never used it in their job. I would have loved to have an entire year of my college education be as an actual teaching assistant rather than learning about what a zeitgeist is in that Music Appreciation Class.

4 ( +6 / -2 )

MOOC's are great for learning, I feel they are undervalued because there is an honor system to them, meaning it's easy to cheat if you really wanted to fill your resume up.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

The future is all about creative problem solving, which is exactly the opposite of what universities are (to teach you today's technology so you can get a job at google, facebook, etc. and maintain their billions of value in operations intact).

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I agree @gogogo that they are great for learning. Yes, the testing/cheating is a challenge if you are looking to pad your CV and/or an employer is looking to assess an applicant. But if a person is simply interested in bettering themselves and becoming knowledgeable on a subject, then honorable the testing is wouldn't matter (actually, the testing would facilitate the individual -as it should do- so that they know what they may not fully understand yet. And with MOOCs you can actually re-take the class at no cost).

Too bad the article didn't mention EdX. Great class selection all given by top universities (Harvard, Berkeley, MIT, Princeton, Columbia, etc) with videos from the actual professors. Very well produced and nearly every class is available free to audit, which is great if you simply just want to learn from the best: edx.org

.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

In 10 years or so, all knowledge will be implanted in the brain using a chip, or injected as a liquid into a vein. There will be no need for the organized transmission of knowledge.

-5 ( +3 / -8 )

Or, courses might not need teachers at all, including online courses with a link a video presentation like on Youtube - lots of off the shelf courses like that already. All so learner-centered - you reckon?

O'Neill is right - lots of disciplines and fields just do not fit, so still some jobs for some teachers.

Just now I am doing stuff for a book on literacy-learning (or learning literacy). I keep balking at it because there are new developments about every two months or so - and it is becoming more frequent. I balk at it because I am deciding that a 'book' is just an inappropriate medium for what I want to convey. I am wondering about just putting it up on a website that I could more user friendly, including interactive - moreso than, say, a book.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

MOOC's are great overall I think, but there are some courses that shouldn't make it all online all the time. Most medical practices and procedures require hand's on learning. Hopefully this will motivate the Japanese education system to become better. A lot of Universities in the US give on the job training, along with internship etc. My college course was also very good at this and it increased my skill set so well that the career I'm in makes me very desirable whenever I go looking for work.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

An MOOC may be an improvement on a distance learning course, but at the end of the day, there is limited professor contact time or quality essay marking. It is not a subsitute for a 3 or 4 year full-time university degree course.

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kaynideJAN. 05, 2016 - 08:45AM JST Honestly, the education system we have currently is a huge sham anyway.

Whose education system - Japan, the U.S., England's, Frances, China's?

In my grandmother's generation a teacher could get a job with a highschool diploma and some training. My mom's generation required a college degree. My generation I would need a master's degree for them to consider me.

You seem to be describing the primary and secondary system as it was historically in the U.S. This article is primarily about university education.

1) Make it free and if necessary make it more difficult. It's not that expensive when compared to all the other monumental wastes of tax money. If a person has the drive and is wiling to expend their free time educating themselves we should reward them. That said it shouldn't be an instant pass- it should be challenging so that when they become a doctor they have truly earned it.

I agree that education through university should be free. However, the idea that it has somehow become a cake walk is silly. Further, competition for entrance, at least in the U.S., is many degrees more intense than it was just a decade ago.

2) At high school begin pushing students to figure out what their skills are and help them figure out what field they'll be going into. Include more practical skill training- there is no shame in becoming a carpenter or hairdresser.

Yes, because so many people know what they want to be doing 20 years into the future when they are 18.

3) Make college level education have much more on-the-job training. FAR too often you'll hear people say they learned such and such in college/highschool and have absolutely never used it in their job.

You seem to be confusing education with vocational training. I'm all for running the "business school" off campus and it could be argued that engineering and the hard sciences should be left to graduate school as there is very little you can do in those fields with just a four-year degree.

I would have loved to have an entire year of my college education be as an actual teaching assistant rather than learning about what a zeitgeist is in that Music Appreciation Class.

What prevented you from doing both? And a music appreciation class is a perfect example of a traditional liberal arts curriculum from which all higher education should flow.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

This is an ongoing discussion here in the US. The problem is that a lot of the online only universities are dubious in terms of quality of education and are not taken seriously. Most of the traditional bricks and mortar universities are very slow to catch up on the online learning sector. Over in the UK, they are much more advanced because very few online-only universities exist. The vast majority of traditional bricks and mortar universities also offer excellent online programs.

I started my degree by attending a traditional college and stayed in a dorm. But I finished it online. I am looking into a masters now, but I can't attend a traditional college here in the US because of childcare issues (and most people working full time are in a similar position) and I just don't trust the Universities of Phoenix / Kaplan / Walden etc colleges. A few traditional ones (Penn State, ASU, GCU etc) are better but pricey. I'll probably end up getting my MS from a UK university again because at least I know it's a bona fide one.

The entrances for even in state universities is becoming insane. There are a lot of complaints with our local UC that the minimum grade requirement is now well above 4.0 and the place is full of international students, not so much because their grades are up there but because they are far more lucrative to the university than an instate student.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

@Jeff: This is going to sound snarky but I assure you I do not mean to:

Whose education system - Japan, the U.S., England's, Frances, China's? Of course I am referring to Japan's, but I would agree this also would include USA. I don't know enough about other countries to make an educated statement on them.

I agree that education through university should be free. However, the idea that it has somehow become a cake walk is silly. Further, competition for entrance, at least in the U.S., is many degrees more intense than it was just a decade ago.

I can agree that generally USA isn't particularly easy, but there are very very easy colleges that you could sleep through and graduate (particularly the community college level). I went to a com. college for 1 semester and Virginia Tech for the rest- it was night and day regarding difficulty.

The point being the difficulty is trivial and unrewarding since it yields the same degree. College name value isn't as highly prioritized as it is in Japan.

Yes, because so many people know what they want to be doing 20 years into the future when they are 18.

They might have a better idea if they actually were taught relevant skills, as in some European school systems. Having absolutely no idea what you want to do at 18 is very much connected to not having any experience or knowledge about what you can and can't do well. Having experience and knowing "Well I really wanna be a doctor..but I'm REALLY good with machines" is much better than "Man I have no idea what I'm gonna do"

Take a look at how many kids want to be professional athletes and KNOW that's what they want by high school. They might not become athletes, but they have a great concept of what they're good at and their skill level in athletics.

Imagine if that much attention was spent on teaching kids engineering or computer programming in a meaningful way- and I don't mean in an elective filler class way.

What prevented you from doing both? And a music appreciation class is a perfect example of a traditional liberal arts curriculum from which all higher education should flow.

A full workday plus college classes? And Homework? No time for that. Moreover, I have absolutely no interest in music history or mechanics, will never use music in my life in any meaningful way beyond listening to it. I had to pay 100s of dollars for a class when a wikipedia article would have sufficed. My degree is in science, specifically child psychology development.

Had I instead been learning techniques to work with children such as songs or games, activities etc I would be getting MUCH more use out the time spent.

tl;dr version: the usual phrase "Man I learned so much my first year at my new job" and "Man I never use any of that stuff I learned at college/highschool" is what I feel is the problem.

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Education IS NEVER FREE! I don't know who thinks education is free anywhere int he world. Someone pays for it. In MOOCs, universities pay for the classes to be designed and get that money from.... let me see... students? the government? Investments? All of them. In many cases, the courses were designed for regular classrooms then adopted to the MOOC environment by the IT Ed staff. It is ridiculous that anyone should think university education should be free for everyone. If there is no cost, there is no accountability to the students. They could just lounge around. Then, you are going to say, no, we will create rules. The students must maintain a B GPA or they get kicked out. Or, they have to finish in 5 years, or they get kicked out. All that does is increase grade inflation and get a bunch of people graduated who shouldn't be because university professors are suckers for sob stories.

It is great that people want to learn more things from online courses. This stuff is totally accessible to anyone with a library card, though. Just get a freakin book and read! There are so many sources of info online that you can find all the material without much effort at all.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

they aren’t going to help me write emails or speak up in meetings,” he says. “So I can’t see MOOCs helping with these areas.”

This is where universities can help its students. Just like 'flipped learning', they can provide some more classes in which students are required to be creative and communicate with others.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

It is ridiculous that anyone should think university education should be free for everyone. If there is no cost, there is no accountability to the students. They could just lounge around. Then, you are going to say, no, we will create rules. The students must maintain a B GPA or they get kicked out. Or, they have to finish in 5 years, or they get kicked out. All that does is increase grade inflation and get a bunch of people graduated who shouldn't be because university professors are suckers for sob stories.

I went through the school system in the UK during its Golden Age, when not only was state education free at point of use (yes I know, the taxpayer paid), the government paid for bright children to attend private schools, and university students received not only free tuition but grants for living expenses. We didn't 'just lounge around'. Those few who did, didn't make it to graduation. The professors were not suckers.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

It is ridiculous that anyone should think university education should be free for everyone. If there is no cost, there is no accountability to the students. They could just lounge around.

It is ridiculous to believe that because there is no cost there is no accountability.

My university, 5 years degree, free -for the students-, students have to keep a minimum grade during the whole formation, half got kicked out after first year, half second year, then around 10% the following years. There is a very high competition. Professors were also taking it seriously.

I like to believe in a system in which you don't need to be born funded (or get a 20 years loan) to get an education and have a chance to improve your situation.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

@AmericanWithAttitude:

Actually Education and a great many other things in life can be free; The whole American mindset of how everything must be earned ("Freedom isn't Free!") only exists because America has created such a polarized atmosphere where everything must be fought for tooth and nail. (Please see Norway as an example of how Freedom can be, in fact, Free).

The students must maintain a B GPA or they get kicked out. Or, they have to finish in 5 years, or they get kicked out. All that does is increase grade inflation and get a bunch of people graduated who shouldn't be because university professors are suckers for sob stories.

Not really sure what this even means- harsher requirements means a higher fail rate unless the college itself is being sloppy. My college was pretty tough and only had about a 55-60% graduate.

As a part time uni teacher now I must say the management has made it clear that if a student isn't deserving they absolutely should be failed. There are all manner of requirements where I'm at including attendance. (miss 5 classes = auto fail)

0 ( +1 / -1 )

MOOC are academic snake oil. People have been predicting the demise of chalk and talk, bricks and mortar since Edison and the gramophone. With current and probable technology, only a limited range of subjects can by taught just using the MOOC model. Subjects in medicine, science, and engineering that require laboratory work for the perfection of skills do not lend themselves to the MOOC model. Performance subjects in the arts and humanities do not lend themselves to the MOOC model.

MOOC courses have had extremely high attrition rates. Typically, only a few percent of those who start a course finish it. It is difficult to provide a support infrastructure if you have no idea how many people will take a course or stick with it.

As some commentators have pointed out, producing MOOC courses from scratch is extremely expensive. Providing tutors to deal with questions is expensive. Some public colleges in the US that thought MOOC could be used to cut the cost of teaching generic courses have found that in practice the savings were not there.

There are also serious copyright issues with MOOC. It is one thing if a tutor hands out a few copies of a copyrighted item to a small class. If you start using copyrighted material in a venue with open access, you will probably get in trouble sooner or later. Getting clearance is time consuming and will often involve fees.

The biggest problem with MOOC is that they do not provide the socialization that many young people need and that employers expect.

MOOC can fill certain niche teaching areas. It is highly unlikely that they will replace chalk and talk, bricks and mortar.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

bullfighter - I generally agree.

I wonder when this topic - virtual reality / digitized / online / education - comes up, significant reference is not made re the socializing and fraternal interactiveness that comes with real world human connectivity.

I would need some convincing to suggest that the ranter, canter and banter of life can be found on a screen. As an adjunct - yes - but give me the corporeal world for growth, esp of youth, as we are more than the sum of 2D.

If only I could touch you all.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

The days of commuting to an institution for work or education are numbered, at least for the mainstream, and good or bad that's just the way it is. A lot of people think it's a bad thing, but one generation always thinks change in general with the next generation is bad. Scholars in the 20th century believed the invention of the ballpoint pen and it's mainstream use signaled the end of society. Likewise with the computer, and so on, and so on. There are no longer that many general benefits to going to a place to study, and FAR more benefits to doing it online and/or without the commute and costs.

They'll fight it -- tooth and nail they'll demand the online degree companies get their own degrees from school, get special documents, right special tests (all of which they'll make to gain more money), require special certification, etc. -- but in the end they'll only end up losing everything if they don't adapt.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

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