No plans for UNC to join with Coursera

UNC officials are not ready to log onto the online teaching platform Coursera.

But as more schools start to consider the new online platform — which allows anyone with Internet connection to enroll — some believe the transition may be certain.

Concerns about academic integrity and finances have kept the UNC system from joining many of its peers in offering free online courses through the new platform, said Suzanne Ortega, senior vice president for academic affairs of the UNC system.

Last week, four of UNC-Chapel Hill’s peer institutions — including Duke University and the University of Virginia — announced partnerships with the company.

The partnerships will allow anyone with an Internet connection to take certain courses offered by partner universities for free.

Ram Neta, a UNC professor who is co-teaching a Duke course through Coursera, said the online courses are an inevitability for the future of higher education.

He said online classes are the most affordable way to educate a vast number of people.

With the addition of Duke and UVa., Coursera is now enrolling more than 100 courses from 16 universities worldwide. These courses will feature new instruction methods as an experiment in improving online pedagogy.

Mitchell Green, a UVa. professor of philosophy, is planning to offer a course next year called ‘Know Thyself’ on Coursera’s platform.

“It’s not the case that the highest priority for me is trying to tell students around the world about Plato or Confucius,” he said. “I see them primarily as means to an end, where the end is cultivation of critical, rigorous, self-reflective thought process.”

But despite the benefits offered by Coursera to universities, the UNC system will not be joining the program just yet.

Ortega said there are many unknown variables that have to be factored into joining the initiative.

She said partnering with Coursera would cost a lot of money without the promise of revenue to the UNC system.

“It is money we’ll have to spend that we can’t spend on something else,” she said.

Ortega said Coursera, like any experiment, has some bugs. She said there is no system for ensuring the identity of test-takers, and there are doubts as to how sustainable the platform’s funding model will be in the future.

UNC’s current online offering is similar in quality to those of Coursera, Ortega said.

“We already do much of this, and the question is whether we need to think about a different platform, a different funding model and exactly what role this plays in the overall portfolio of the institution,” she said.

But Neta and Ortega both acknowledged that it would be in the best interest of the University to stay abreast of developments with Coursera and similar initiatives.

Ortega said the new online teaching methods will likely have a positive impact on in-classroom teaching.

“Other universities, like Duke, are thinking of ways of changing the on-campus service that they provide so that it offers a value that’s very different from the value of online education, and it’s worth paying a lot of money for. I believe that UNC ought to think about that as well,” said Neta.

Contact the State & National Editor at state@dailytarheel.com.