The online student: Mooc, myself and Ivy

The history of the world since 1300 is all about agriculture, disease, war, politics, trade and the creation of wealth.

I know this – and a little about Moguls, Ottomans, Samarkand, Calicut, Venice, merchants, trade winds, empires and revolutions – thanks to my 14-week course in global history at Princeton.

But I didn't go to the expensive Ivy League institution in New Jersey. Rather, it came to me in a free "massively open online course" – or Mooc – given by a history professor at the US university.

The course was among the first offerings on the coursera.org website. Coursera is a technology startup emerging from Stanford to bring third-level education to the world via the internet. Course materials typically include video lectures, some notes, a free ebook and free software.

Students have assignments and can participate in the community of fellow students, who answer questions, discuss the course and review each other’s homework.

My motivation was to learn something new in an area I’m interested in as a hobby.

At the moment it’s not possible to gain a traditional qualification from a Mooc; when it does become available, there will be a cost. Moocs are sometimes criticised for their high levels of attrition, meaning students start the course but don’t always complete it, or don’t participate fully.

I underestimated the time I would need to keep up with lectures and deadlines, although I was able to download lectures to my smartphone and catch up on commutes, or while sitting on a park bench.

Perhaps, in five years, Moocs will be standard. Millions of students around the world are using Coursera, EdX, Udacity and other Mooc providers to access some of the best universities and professors in the world for free.

I might not have attended an Ivy League university, nor did I receive a qualification from one, but for my 85,000 classmates and me, taking “The History of The Globe since 1300” was the next best thing.

coursera.org One of the original providers
edx.org A joint effort between Harvard, MIT, Berkeley and the University of Texas
futurelearn.com/courses The UK Universities and Open University come together
france-universite-numerique.fr French-language M oocs
iversity.org German universities offering Mooc s
open2study.com Courses by Australian institutes including Flinders University and the University of Western Sydney
mooc-list.com An aggregator of Moocs