1st October 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
The UK has launched an online education project called FutureLearn, which will allow the UK to enter the global market in online universities. Online university courses or massive open online courses are known as ‘Moocs’, and will offer courses that are entirely taught and assessed on the internet. The technology will allow students to follow their courses on mobile phones as well as computers. More than 20 universities in the UK will offer courses under the FutureLearn scheme.
Universities, including Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Nottingham, Bristol and Warwick will offer fully online courses to students, who will be given access to educational materials via the British Library, the British Museum and the British council. The programme is currently in an experimental phase, offering short courses featuring multiple choice questions, which currently yield no formal qualifications. Universities offering the courses are hopeful that students will be attracted by the idea of being able to follow a university level course that fits around the rest of their lives, with no travel involved. The University of London International Programme currently has more than 200,000 students who have signed up for the programme, indicating the programme will be successful enough to be rolled out in full.
The department for education has praised the scheme, saying that it is high time that the UK step into the rapidly expanding global online university market. From the perspective of UK universities, offering online courses will raise the profile of their courses and academics, which they hope will attract more funding and more students who will take campus courses. The vice-chancellor of Reading University has said that offering free taster courses online is a “no-brainer”, and would rapidly open up the higher education market, making it more accessible. He said that as the demand for qualifications in the job market grows, so will the demand for higher education courses which students can fit around the rest of their lives. FutureLearn has said that the online university courses offered a fresh approach which would open up the possibilities of a university education to those who are unable to undertake a campus course due to time and financial constraints.