EPFL joins the online learning wave
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Starting this fall semester, EPFL will join a circle of prestigious partners in Coursera, an online learning platform that has already attracted more than 700,000 students.
“This is the future, and we must be part of it!” Martin Vetterli, dean of EPFL’s School of Computer and Communications Sciences cannot hide his enthusiasm when discussing the agreement that has just been signed with Coursera. This Stanford University spin-off is offering a web based online learning platform whose content is provided by a group of carefully chosen partner institutions.
This Tuesday, July 17, 2012, Coursera published the names of twelve new content providers that will accompany the four original founding member institutions of Stanford, Princeton, the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania. EPFL is among the prestigious names of this second group – Caltech, Duke, Johns Hopkins, University of Toronto – and it’s the first university from continental Europe to offer “massive open online courses,” or MOOCs, via the platform.
Starting this fall semester, Professor Martin Odersky’s Scala programming language course can be taken, free of charge, from anywhere in the world. In the spring 2013 semester, a signal processing course and an introductory programming course will follow, this latter Coursera’s first course ever offered in French.
Courses from other schools at EPFL will eventually round out the School’s offer on Coursera. Teachers who would like to use this channel can take advantage of support offered by EPFL’s Pedagogical Research and Support Center (CRAFT), in order to avoid the pitfalls that can be encountered in courses that don’t have direct human contact. “I have a feeling that the MOOCs will be a kind of tsunami in the academic world,” says Vetterli. “We don’t know what the consequences will be yet, but it was important for us to participate from the beginning, rather than risk missing the boat!”
Even if it doesn’t last, the experience will have benefits for the School. “We are in good company with these content providers, and it’s excellent in terms of international visibility,” continues Vetterli. “In addition, I think that we can play a unique role, particularly in basic courses, for example in French-speaking Africa.” Finally, he adds, the “ruthless” comparisons between online courses and the creation of exercises designed for online interaction can only serve to improve traditional teaching methods.
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