Although distance education is almost as old as the hills, as with pretty much all other aspects of life it has been revolutionised by the Internet.
Gone are the days of students receiving books and lecture notes in the mail, or setting their video recorders–remember them?–to tape Open University lectures broadcast during the wee hours. They’ve been replaced with all sorts of innovative online learning options, from videoconference seminars, live chat sessions with teachers or lecturers, on-demand video lectures and ebooks. Learning without having to step foot outside of your home–or even getting out of your dressing gown–has never been easier.
One thing that has stayed the same until very recently, however, was that the biggest players of distance education had stayed the same. The Open University continues to be the place to turn in this country if you want to get a degree through this method of learning. And quite right, too: this groundbreaking seat of learning is something that we Brits should be as proud of as we are our ancient universities.
Until recently your three options for distance higher-education learning were following a degree at the Open University, choosing from the much more limited set of options offered by other, ‘real-world’ universities, or taking a degree with one of the other, less well-known distance or online universities, some of which are not necessarily of the highest academic quality.
A distance-learning course can seem like a bit of a gamble for some people. This isn’t because of the quality of the courses–if you take your degree with the Open University or one of the UK’s other universities you can count on it being just as accepted as a qualification as a face-to-face degree–but rather because distance learning is for most people a bit of an unknown quantity. And with tuition fees steadily climbing, the prospect of shelling out thousands of pounds for something they might not enjoy doing could be seen as too much of a gamble.
However, recent developments in online learning have led to the birth of a new type of distance course, known as a Massive Open Online Course (or MOOC for short). These courses are offered by academics at some of the world’s leading universities, including some of the big Ivy League names from the States. And, perhaps best of all, they’re completely free to enrol in and take.
One of the leading providers of MOOCs is Coursera. All you do is register on the site, searchthrough the database of courses, and sign up for the ones you want to take. Then it’s a question of following and participating in the course through a combination of watching video lectures, completing weekly assignments and joining in course forum discussions.
The list of courses available is expanding all the time, with courses from within most of the key subjects taught at universities now being covered in some form or another. And the fact that there are generally no entrance tests or prior entry requirements, combined with the courses being completely free, means that these courses are a great way of both trying out a subject you’re curious about and seeing if distance learning is for you.
At present these courses are not the same as doing a full degree. You’ll get a certificate of completion for each one you do, but no matter how many you take you won’t get a degree from it. Nevertheless, this certainly doesn’t make them a waste of your time. As we say, they’re ideal if you think of them as taster courses. And they could even informally help you with a university application, as completing one demonstrates an interest in and commitment to your chosen subject.