by Donna Iadipaolo

THE UNIVERSITY OF Michigan has significantly increased its offerings of free, massive open online courses, otherwise widely known as “MOOCs.” At a result, along with other outcomes, U-M receives major advertising, and more online learners get a world-class educational experience at, to a large degree, no cost.

According to the numbers, U-M has grown in their course offerings from only four MOOC course offerings begun in the summer of 2012, to the present creation of 24 MOOC courses reaching 2.5 million learners. That is an astonishing four-fold increase in free course offerings from when U-M first became involved in MOOCs.

These courses are offered though the online website Coursera, a learning platform founded by Stanford University Computer Science professors Daphane Koller and Andrew Ng. Coursera is a for-profit company with millions of enrollments thus far—the largest MOOCs provider. Other MOCC competitors include Udacity and edEx, a non-profit started by Harvard and MIT.

The format of MOOCs is that they are largely made up of online videos. Grading is often automated or even peer-evaluated.

But there are even more costs and benefits to such recent increased online presence of U-M.

“The University of Michigan and the Office of Digital Education & Innovation (DEI) began partnering with U-M faculty to create MOOCs in 2012,” according to James DeVaney, Assistant Vice Provost for Digital Education and Innovation.

“During this period, we have created 24 MOOCs that as of today have reached nearly 2.5 million lifelong learners. Our goal is to help lifelong learners discover and explore U-M MOOCs. This includes members of the University of Michigan community and alumni, as well as audiences all over the world. Some of our efforts are focused on driving broad awareness, while others are tailored to particular learners whose interests or learning objectives are especially well-aligned with individual MOOCs.”

Coursera now touts having more than 11 million registered learners on its online learning platform. In total, according to the company’s website, they offer at 974 free courses and work with 118 partners, many colleges and universities from around the world. Surprisingly, it is estimated that only one-third of MOOC enrollees are within the United States.

Gautam Kaul, Professor of Finance and Business at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, has been working with MOOCs since U-M became affiliated with Coursera.

“I have been involved with MOOCs for close to three years now, ever since UM started their involvement,” said Kaul. “I have offered a MOOC seven times and also worked with our Provost’s Office of Digital Education & Innovation to craft our strategy and policy for MOOCs and, more importantly, the role of digital education for our residential programs. I head the Digital Course Selection Committee responsible for evaluating and approving MOOC proposals.”

Kaul added that the U-M MOOC courses benefits both U-M as well as the general public.

“MOOCs serve multiple purposes,” Kaul added. “They are a powerful way to showcase the breadth and depth of the work we do at U-M, perhaps the best kind of advertising. They also provide access to our education to a global audience, many of whom are unable to attend our university. Finally, MOOCs allow us to experiment and learn so that we can enhance the learning of our residential students and keep moving up the value chain.”

Kaul revealed that U-M provides a stipend of $10,000 per course for a professor’s first Coursera MOOC offering and the university provides all the production and support needed to create, launch and run the courses.

“Currently, the revenues from the MOOCs are limited to a small fee for Signature Track Certificates that some participants choose to sign up for, and in return the certificate that they get is from the faculty member (not the University),” explained Kaul. “The revenues from the fee are shared between Coursera and the U because Coursera hosts the courses and runs the whole platform and has technical support at scale. After the production and support costs are covered, the revenues from the U’s portion are shared with the faculty. This is the norm at all universities with variations on the extent to which, and how, the sharing between the U and the faculty member occurs.”

DeVaney had some input to add with respect to the topic of revenues earned, as well.

“The University and Coursera have entered into a Partnership Agreement which details how revenue earned from U-M MOOCs is shared between Coursera and the University,” Devaney clarified. “Per this Agreement the University receives a pre-defined percentage of all revenue generated by its courses directly from Coursera on a quarterly basis. No funds are paid by Coursera directly to University professors. The University, through DEI, then shares a fixed percentage of MOOC revenue back with the individual professors who have created and delivered the MOOCs.”

In other words, ultimately Coursera shares part of its revenue with the University, and the University shares part of that, after covering various costs, with the faculty. The University does not pay up front for Coursera’s services, such as creating and managing the platform, maintenance, for instance. Additionally, all advertising is done by Coursera.

Many people wonder how Coursera makes its money.

A good part of its revenue stream comes from the “Signature Track” courses that offer a certificate upon adequate completion. The Signature Courses cost about $50 each.

Investigations done by the Chronicle of Higher Education previously reported that Coursera shares with universities 6-15 percent of the total revenue and 20 percent of the gross profits on its courses.

“Signature Track Certificates” cary no actual college credit, but give students a certificate from the professor of the MOOC that major requirements of the class have been completed. The certificates do cost money, versus the usually all-free Coursera course offering without a fee.

However, when MOOCs first began, because they are no costs to students (unless enrolled in the Signature Track), they were thought to be a way to revolutionize education offerings from premiere  universities to people around the globe. However, this utopic vision has not entirely panned out.

“MOOCs, due to technological barriers, are not serving the economically disadvantaged, at least not to the extent as the initial hype,” said Kaul.

Specifically, millions of people still do not have access to computers or Internet connections, and therefore are not able to enroll in MOOCS.

“Things are changing through the use of mobile technology and translations of courses into multiple languages. MOOCs are also in a very early stage of evolution and many of them may not be sufficiently rigorous. Over time, however, MOOCs will evolve. The much more interesting developments, at least from the perspective of a top-notch research university such as at U-M, will be in the use of digital education to transform residential education.”

Some universities affiliated with Coursera have recently been working to grant college credit for MOOCs courses. For instance Antioch University, in order to reduce the costs of earning a four-year degree, has offered a way to earn credit for MOOC courses at less than the per-course cost of tuition and fees at their schools. Other colleges and universities are exploring similar credit offering options for MOOCs, some with proctored exam options.

In addition, a few institutions, including San Jose State University, have reportedly allowed students who pass MOOCs to earn college credit, as long as they pay the college a $150 fee. Of course, this is quite an offering to receive college credit for $150.

Fast Company previously reported that some courses from University of California Irvine, Duke University, and University of Pennsylvania offered college credit to students completing their Coursera courses online, at rate of under $200 each. These courses were largely introductory college- level courses. However, college credit courses are not advertised on Coursera at this time, and Coursera did not return inquiries about future similar offering at this time of this article’s deadline.

Interestingly, Kaul does not see U-M, even though it is a public university, offering such actual college credit for MOOCs at this time at such a low cost.

“As of now, I do not see that happening,” said Kaul. “Again, MOOCs are one part of digital education and serve specific purposes. As mentioned earlier, digital education—enabled in large part by the success of MOOCs—is already impacting residential education, especially in professional schools, across the globe.”

Certainly, proponents of online learning are attracted to the potential that these types of classes can reduce the cost of college. However, many universities and colleges are not entirely ready to concede that online learning is as effective or as valuable as a degree earned in a traditional classroom. Though the negative perception of online learning, versus face-to-face learning, does seem to be improving.

“The jury is still out on this issue and will be out for a while. It is too early to tell,” said Kaul. “Of course, MOOCs are very cost-effective and do provide you the opportunity to learn. But they are not a substitute for education provided at, say, U-M. The hope however is that digital education blended with high quality   interactions could make parts of what we do more cost effective. We could for example use digital education to deliver content at scale, while leaving F2F (face-to-face) time with faculty for discussion-based learning. Some of this is already happening, but it is too early to tell whether it is cost effective.”

There is also the question of retention and learning outcomes in traditional brick-and-mortar courses versus online learning. U-M is also interested in exploring whether online learning is more pedagogically effective as traditional learning, or at least equivalent.

“We are designing a number of experiments to explore the effectiveness of various approaches to learning,” stated DeVaney.

Coursera, however, highlights on their website a U.S. Department of education study that determined that “classes with online learning—whether taught completely online or blended—on average produce stronger student learning.”

Regarding ownership of the course materials created, Kaul said each particular college or university retains authorship.

“Technically, the university owns all copyrights, especially for commissioned work like MOOCs that are not part of a faculty member’s regular role at the U, but then the U gives the ownership back to the faculty member,” stated Kaul. “It however retains the right to use the content for the benefit of the university’s broader mission. Again, this is new territory in the teaching domain and there is a lot of variation across universities….”

Kaul is also involved in University of Michigan online credit offerings at the Ross School of Business.

“For example, I have just completed a Fast Track Finance Program at Ross, offered to students interested in a career in finance,” said Kaul. “This program used digital education and flipping the classroom as a fundamental pedagogical method to enhance student learning. Similarly, I am currently offering a capstone Exec MBA course that uses digital education as part of its core methodology, again to enhance the student learning.”

The College of Engineering at the University of Michigan offers online programs in Automotive, Energy Systems, Global Automatic and Manufacturing, and Manufacturing Engineering at regular U-M college tuition costs.

Professor Margaret S. Wooldridge has been working in the U-M Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in the College of Engineering for 17 years. She has taught online courses for university credit there for eight years.

“The format we have typically used (online learning in the engineering school) it to record lectures and provide the lectures online, as well as the other class materials,” said Wooldridge. “We use a variety of tools, mostly web-based, to provide real-time interactions with students as well as delayed time interactions.”

Wooldridge said that she was approached by an administrator to teach a MOOC course.

“I was approached by our U-M Provost Martha Pollack to teach a course on thermodynamics, as a means for us (U-M) to determine the merits and demerits of MOOC classes, and meet a need for this topic in the Coursera curriculum,” said Wooldridge. “Personally, I thought MOOCs would be a good forum to promulgate my ideas on energy conservation, and thermodynamics is a great topic.”

She then started teaching her first Coursera course in Spring 2013. However, Woodridge has been teaching a variety of graduate online courses in the College of Engineering for the past eight years and the Coursera thermodynamics class that she offers is an undergraduate level class.

The College of Engineering graduate online courses cost regular University of Michigan tuition rates.

“The online courses offered through the U-M are not free,” said Wooldridge. “The students pay tuition for these classes and you have to be in a matriculated degree program to take more than two online courses. The U-M has had online courses for over a decade. The university is expanding the online offerings for both MOOCs and these other tuition based courses.”

Wooldridge believes there are a variety of issues pertaining to why the University has increased its presence with MOOCs.

“There are many reasons. One is to present the U-M as a source of expertise on topics of importance and significance to a global community,” said Wooldridge. “Another is the philanthropic value to the U-M as an outreach activity to share knowledge freely. My course on thermodynamics, in particular, provides both introduction of fundamental engineering principles to students new to the discipline in a risk-free environment, and a review to students who want to refresh their knowledge. So MOOCs are great advertisements to come to U-M for the residential experience. Another good reason is that MOOCs offer platforms to try new teaching methods to engage students enrolled in distance learning classrooms. MOOCs are giant petri dishes.”

Wooldridge added that several of her colleagues are also interested in teaching MOOCs in the future. In fact, she said there is now a committee that has been formed to review proposals for new MOOC classes.

She added that she foresees online learning having an even larger presence at the University level in the future.

“Yes, I expect online learning to play a larger and larger role, to both supplement face-to-face contact, augment residential experiences, and enable more engaged interactions with off-campus students,” Wooldridge described.

U-Ms free MOOC offerings are not limited to the Ross School of Business and the College of Engineering. Courses from the School of Information, School of Medicine, and the College of Literature, Science, and Arts and other colleges are also available.

For instance, Prof. Eric Rabkin is a University of Michigan Professor in the fields of English Language and Literature and the School of Art & Design, and has been an active faculty member from 1970 to 2013. He also became involved with MOOCs when U-M became involved.

Rabkin said his belief in public education, personal enjoyment of course design, love of teaching, as well as other factors led him to create a MOOC for the University of Michigan, Coursea, and online learners.

“I enjoy being a pioneer,” said Rankin “The experience to date has been wonderful for me and, according to the emails that I receive, for thousands of participants.”

Some of the greatest benefits of the MOOCs, according to Rabkin, are that the free online MOOCs are low pressure, offer a wide-variety of classes, have easy access to participants, and are “dismantling the values and content of formal education.” along with “demonstrating the power of crowd-based work.”

Rabkin currently offers a literature course as a MOOC titled “Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World.”

He said he recommends that both more students and teachers alike to be involved with the MOOCs movement, which gains more momentum each year.

“I would encourage people to sign up as students for the same reasons I would suggest they read books: ‘dulce et utile,’ as Horace said, ‘sweet and useful.’ I would encourage people to sign up as faculty because it allows them to serve humanity in new and often significant ways,” stated Rabkin.

But Rabkin does suggest for some restructuring for MOOCs in their current incarnation.

“The economic model for MOOCs will have to change,” said Rabkin. “They cannot ultimately be based on the course-unit of delivery and the four-month lump delivery schedule and the selling of ‘college credits’ to the participants and brand-recognition to the faculty and home institutions. Wouldn’t many Americans be just as eager to learn—or at least start to learn—from Jack Welch as from Michael Porter if they were a mid-level manager? To learn French from Audrey Tautou as from an American-born professor? To learn about the Vietnam War from Tim O’Brien as from a historian or political scientist?”

Along with expanding the experts who teach the MOOCs, he suggests for MOOCs, and education more generally, to discover methods to further empower all participating in online education.

“The whole current regime of authorization and accreditation of instructors, institutions, ‘students,’ and the experiences and productions of those students will necessarily be atomized, disinter-mediated, and customized. What iTunes is doing to the music industry, online education—of which MOOCs are only a part—will do to traditional education.”

Proponents of MOOCs have also agreed that they can be an answer to overcrowded classes and also open ways to enhance and change the way people teach and learn.

On the negative side, about less than 10 percent of people enrolled in Coursera courses actually complete the online courses. And, many contend that cheating is more rampant than with brick-and-mortar school because anyone can take the test and quizzes online other then the registered enrollee, without monitoring.

However, all kinds of online learning is probably here to stay, and making a greater presence every year.