Online Learning Update

January 2, 2013

UW’s online learning classes find big market — if they’re free

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:05 am

By Katherine Long, Seattle Times

Just a handful of students have signed up for the for-credit version of the University of Washington’s online courses, but thousands are taking them for free. UW has debated whether it makes sense to give away courses when it is having to cut other expenses because of the state’s financial woes. Now it is among the first universities to experiment with offering a more rigorous, for-credit version of a free online course, calculating that if it can get 30 to 40 students in each Coursera course to take it for credit, the classes will pay for themselves, said David Szatmary, vice provost of UW Educational Outreach. But at least so far, just a few students have shown interest in getting credit. Five people took the information-security class for credit. The low participation rate could be because the notice of the for-credit sign-up came late and was not well-advertised on the Coursera site, Szatmary said.

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2019981349_coursera25m.html

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