Top universities working with Corsera
Top Universities collaborating on providing free online courses via Corsera:
The fast growing speed of online teaching websites sparks fear among students and faculty that Large Lecture-based Teaching will be obsolete in the next 10 to 20 years. Online Teaching Websites, compared to a Lecture-based Teaching, promotes one-on-one teaching method which is preferred by some people especially executives who wishes to have a Master or Doctorate Degree but they do not have the time on going into a school after work.
Despite the alarming analysis of experts about Online Education, twelve of the top universities in the United States and Europe have joined hands on making a Free Online Teaching platform that gives access to people who wants to be educated using a curriculum imposed by top educational institutions. The plan was announced last July 17, 2012, and it is now written in the history of online teaching. Some observers were pleased by this plan of the top universities because it will enable the less financially capable people to continue their studies without spending a lot of money, unlike enrolling in an elite university like Harvard.
Coursera is an online teaching site that the top universities wished to make contribution to. Some of the universities are, Caltech, John Hopkins, California University, and University of San Francisco. And some Universities in Europe like Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne and the Edinburgh University contributed into the program as well. California Institute of Technology and the Pennsylvania University will be contributing a combined amount of 3.7 Million Dollars or 2.4 Million Pounds as an investment to the new Project. The online teaching website Cousera has been offering classes from University of Michigan, California, Pennsylvania, Berkeley and Princeton for a long time now.
These classes that were offered by the Online Teaching Site Coursera do not give any degree or diploma to a student. Instead, as a 
result of rigorous training and passing the exams, the student will receive a Certificate that can be used on looking for employment. This is a little bit of a stop-gap for a student, just for him or her to look for a job. Then when he or she has a job already, then he or she may proceed on enrolling into a University and it will not be a hassle since the student already had an idea what will be discussed in the lectures.
The two founders of Coursera, Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, gave a statement about the recent contribution of the top universities to their website. Ng said, “Students will have greater access than ever before to the world’s foremost subject-matter experts.” While Koller said, “We’re fortunate to have the support of these highly respected academic institutions as we move toward our shared goal of providing high-quality education to everyone around the world.”
Aside from Coursera, many online teaching website like Open University is rising and starting to become very visible in the Education Market. This worries some experts, because they said that the rise of Online Teaching may affect the balance of power in higher education. The growth of these websites will most likely make all universities to consider on putting some emphasis on one-on-one teaching to counter the rising industry of online teaching.
