MIT and Georgia Tech Students Can Now Earn Credits From a MOOC

23 Oct 2017, Mon

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) have recently offered parallel versions of their on-campus courses and allow their students to earn credits from them.

It is the first time that on-campus students, besides outside learners, can earn credit from a MOOC. The courses include MIT’s Circuits and Electronics and Georgia Tech’s Introduction to Computing using Python, both offered on edX. These two courses, as alternatives to on-campus study requirement, were piloted in the last academic year and are offered again now.

Lecture videos of Introduction to Computing using Python (Georgia Tech)

For the MIT course, the students’ feedback from the pilot revealed that the students considered the videos and homework as more useful than other provided online materials. They also thought the course was less stressful than their on-campus classes.

One of the students, Kenneth Friedman, mentioned in his blog that the online problem set provided instant feedbacks, which solved the issue in most standard classes - the massive delay in the problem-solving feedback loop.

For the Georgia Tech course, there is no released research on the course performance yet, but the course is providing in-person recitations by teaching assistants and free online smart textbooks for personalized learning.