MOOC in India

Globally,  MOOC is being adapted as one of the key educational technology tools, hopefully  providing quality education at affordable costs that can bring in the last man in the society in the main flow of national development. MOOC is knocking at the Indian doors.  MOOC can help achieve  expected wishful changes in Higher Education (HE) in India. We have to wait and watch, however, for one decade to see how MOOC is going to help us, if implemented it in India before long. 

As I know, MOOC was introduced 5 years ago in US with certain concepts in mind as given below: 

1

 The models like Flipped classroom or Disruptive Innovating Colleges could not come up to expectations. 

 2.

 It was realized that hardly 15-20 % students are admitted in universities like Harvard and a big chunk 85-80 % remains out, could not reach to main flow of national development. How to impart quality education at affordable costs? How to reach to the last man in society so that his/her contribution can be obtained in national prosperity? And that is how MOOC was given birth about 5 years ago. The idea is to provide on line free education and only charge the bare minimum exam fees. Universities like Harvard, Stanford, California, etc., accepted this challenge and introduced MOOC a couple of years ago. MOOC is based on a well thought philosophy, methodology and fool-proof mechanism.

 3. 

The developing countries are eager to adopt MOOC model. In the present article, the author has pointed out 5 aspects of MOOC application in Indian HE. These are: 1. Employability rules will change 2. Theoretical teaching will be replaced 3. Local context will matter 4. Clicks will overtake bricks 5. More Hybrid options will emerge. The Author has a wishful thinking that MOOC can help solve some issues posed before Indian HE like increasing employability, easy click access to data, etc. 

 4. 

However, in view of the Indian ways of working style and mind set, can we turn MOOC a real boon to masses? Quality is going down (just consider a few items: input quality, Performance Appraisal, Academic Audits, institute’s score card, quality of question papers set in various universities, etc.: good research topics really), we are after getting a degree by any means, severe punishment to defaulters is not our style, we always talk about democracy and Constitution just to safeguard one's vested interests, etc. We have got earlier correspondence schools, then open universities, IITs started on-line lectures, etc., but we have a limited success. Why? Is there any white paper on this issue? Cost-benefit analysis?

In short, to implement MOOC successfully in India, our stalwarts will have to do a heavy home work. 

*****9/7/2014 PHW