The Online Revolution: Learning without Limits

We are at the cusp of a major transformation in higher education. In the past year, we have seen the advent of MOOCs - massively open online classes (MOOCs) - top-quality courses from the best universities offered for free. These courses exploit technology to provide a real course experience to students, including video content, interactive exercises with meaningful feedback, using both auto-grading and peer-grading, and rich peer-to-peer interaction around the course materials. We now see MOOCs from dozens of top universities, offering courses to millions of students from every country in the world. The courses start from bridge/gateway courses all the way through graduate courses, and span a range of topics including computer science, business, medicine, science, humanities, social sciences, and more. In this talk, I'll discuss this far-reaching experiment in education, including some examples and preliminary analytics. I'll also discuss why we believe this model can support an improved learning experience for on-campus students, via blended learning, and provide unprecedented access to education to millions of students around the world.