Day 319 of 1000
Update: See clarification from Saylor Foundation here on how they provide certification of course completion.
I just read an article about a company named Udacity that provides free, college level education on line. It does not have a lot of content yet, but, if I get the concept, it sounds better than some other on line educational systems. The idea is this:
- Anyone can take any class they want any time they want for free.
- After the course is completed, the student can go to a walk-in Udacity testing center to take a test to show they actual get the material and it was not someone else who took the course for them.
If you are into education solely for the sake of learning stuff, then their are probably better sites around. Andrew pointed us to the Saylor Foundation website. It has full blown college classes by great universities, but no way for a student to unequivocally demonstrate they took the course and understand the material. If the Saylor Foundation added some say to do that, they would be way ahead of Udacity and have a way to make more money. They same is true for Khan Academy. Stanford and MIT also have classes on line. It seems like they would benefit greatly by following this model, too.
I think this is the future. The whole issue with on line education is that it is difficult to prove you were the one who actually took the class.I think these are tremendous ideas to which there will be additonal innovation both in terms of content delivery and confirmation that the student has actually learned the material and been certified in a manner that is appreciated by industry and even academia.
Hi there,
Thank you so much for including the Saylor Foundation in your blog post! I’m the Community and External Affairs for the Saylor Foundation, and just wanted to quickly clarify your point about ways our students can demonstrate that they took the course. If you click through any of our completed courses, you’ll see that each course starts with a set of learning objectives, which are further broken down across each of the course units. At the end of each course, there is a final exam that tests the student’s knowledge and comprehension of each of the course objectives. Upon passing the final exam, students can download and print a certificate of completion – and those students who are using our ePortfolio system also can show proof of completion via their transcript.
I hope this clears up any points of confusion! If you have any questions about Saylor.org, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
My best,
Camie