Studying at Stanford or Harvard is real!
On April 24 a workshop on massive open online courses (MOOC) was held at Belgorod State Technological University named after V.G. Shukhov. The event was organized by Alex Gavrunov, a BSTU graduate, Fellow of International Education Fulbright program in Western Michigan University (2013), a member of non-profit project organization"Global Student".
According to Alex, the higher education system in the world today is on the verge of a real revolution. Over the past few years a large number of renowned universities around the world have opened free access to their educational resources for everyone, regardless of their location and financial possibilities. Today, almost everyone can attend a video lecturing course from such universities as Harvard, Stanford, Yale, the best universities in Toronto and Melbourne, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
These lectures have been called massive open online courses/ which offer materials in various subjects. The information can be found both at university websites, and on specially intended Internet platforms. The main and most popular of them is http://Coursera.org, http://Edx.org and http://Udacity.com. An excellent resource where you can find continuously updated schedule of courses is http://class-central.com sites and http://mooc-list.com.
The main advantage of MOOC is not only an opportunity to listen to lectures for self-education, but also to pass exams to get a certificate which can be given to an employer or a university students admission office to increase chances of entering a university. Some universities have started to accept these certificates as confirmation of course taken, with points taken as an advantage when studying a bachelor or master program.
After the workshop the participants had the opportunity to ask questions. Students were interested if the courses in Russian are available, which subjects can be taught, and whether MOOC provide the study of foreign languages.
If you want to gain new knowledge, learning from the best universities of the world? Massive open online courses is your access to education of the future! Details can be found on the website http://www.mirovoystudent.ru.
Oxana Timoshenko
Photo by Georgiy Alexandrov