Context:

The Khan Academy’s online education videos attracted thousands of learners. Today, the academy has millions of learners from across the world, ranging from school-goers to graduate-level learners. Such is the enduring popularity of online education.

About Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs):

• A free web-based distance learning program that is designed for large numbers of geographically dispersed students. A MOOC may be patterned on a college or university course or be less structured. 
• MOOCs, a genre of online courses, emerged as the world recovered from the economic setback by 2011.
• The institutional origins of MOOCs can be traced back to three free online courses offered by Stanford University in 2011.
• In India, both the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore offer a variety of MOOCS courses through the edX platform.
• As of 2021, there existed nearly 35 MOOCS Learning Management Systems (LMS) spread across North America, Asia and Europe.

MOOCs in India:

• Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds’ (SWAYAM):
  • SWAYAM is a publicly funded MOOCs platform launched in 2017 by the Ministry of Education.
  • It is driven by the National Education Policy’s principles of inclusivity and cross-disciplinary learning.
  • SWAYAM aims to provide free online courses to a wide range of learners across the country.

• Rapid Scale-up:
  • By 2025, India is expected to have 900 million active internet users.
  • This will lead to a significant increase in the user community of SWAYAM.
  • The platform will need to leverage AI-based learning and teaching services to cater to the growing demand.

Advantages of MOOCs:

• Accessible Learning: MOOCs provide access to online education videos and courses, allowing learners from across the world to access educational resources easily.
• Scale and Reach: MOOCs enable the delivery of courses on a global scale, partnering with reputed institutions and universities. 
  • This allows a large number of learners to enroll in courses and benefit from the expertise of renowned educators.
• Variety of Courses: MOOCs offer a wide range of courses, covering different subjects and disciplines, catering to learners at various educational levels, from school-goers to graduate-level learners.
• Affordability: MOOCs, particularly those offered by non-profit organizations, provide entry-level courses either for free or at low fees, making education more affordable and accessible to a broader audience.
• Technological Innovation: MOOC platforms have been leveraging technologies like regenerative AI to enhance the learning experience, provide personalized assistance, and increase learner engagement.

Disadvantages of MOOCs:

• High attrition rates: Only 15% of the enrolled students completed the course. The attrition is high because students’ don’t have the inclination to do so because they have not paid any fees or low fees..
• Not meant for students with disabilities: Learners who have visual disabilities can’t be made to go through such courses.
• No special attention: The students if they don’t understand a topic, can’t get special attention from the tutor.
• Efficacy issue: More than 90 percent of those who sign up for MOOC courses do not complete the courses and this throws up questions about the efficacy of the model.

Why Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI)?

• It focuses on generating new content like images, audio, text, etc., based on patterns and rules learned from data.
• Disadvantages of MOOCs led to regenerative AI.
  • MOOCs platforms face financial challenges due to high operating expenses, low revenue from entry-level courses, and a high dropout rate among learners. 
  • To address these issues, MOOCs platforms like Coursera, edX, and Khan Academy have adopted generative AI tools.
  • Examples:
    • edX’s Chat GPT plug-in helps aspiring learners to successfully locate platforms and courses that suit their requirements. 
    • The Khan Academy’s chat box ‘Khanmigo’ challenges learners with thought-provoking questions.

Way Forward:

• It is the perfect moment where global online education brands will not shy away from experimenting with regenerative AI tools.
• India’s SWAYAM platform is in for interesting times, where the user community will drastically scale up by 2025. 
  • This rapid scale up will necessitate the utilization of AI-based learning and teaching services by institutes affiliated to the platform. 
• Indeed, in the coming years, the drift of SWAYAM courses is more likely in the direction of cross-disciplinary course offerings that utilize unstructured data.
• SWAYAM is thus ideally positioned to derive benefits from the evolving semantic web.

News Source: The Hindu