Recently I wrote a post arguing that xMOOCs such as Coursera, edX and Udacity will likely evolve and that “while the current examples of massive online courses are interesting, the real potential of MOOCs will be revealed in future generations.”
Today Antioch College announced that it is creating a new MOOC-for-credit partnership with Coursera. The key points as summarized by Tony Bates (via Inside Higher Ed article):
This article reports on an interesting deal signed between Coursera and Antioch University. Antioch is a well-established private university with campuses in four different states, with around 4,000 mainly adult students. Under this deal:
- Antioch University will pay Coursera for the rights to offer MOOCs from 33 universities for credit as part of its third year undergraduate program, focusing particularly on students transferring in from community colleges (the fourth year will be on campus)
- Antioch will charge a lower tuition fee for these courses (closer to community college fee levels than public universities’)
- Antioch will assign a faculty member to provide learner support for Antioch-registered students in each MOOC-based course, with about 20 students per instructor (as for on-campus classes)
- Students will take an exam at the end of each course for credit from Antioch
- Coursera will pay rights to the universities contributing MOOC courses to Antioch.