Taking The Next Step in Online Education With Credit Equivalency

Despite recent advances being made in education technology, right now students actually have dwindling options when it comes to higher education. Between the decline of education budgets and rising tuition, there seem to be fewer opportunities and more obstacles for students to complete a degree program.  Due to state budget cuts across multiple states, large state university systems and community colleges have been hardest hit.  As a recent Huffington Post article put in perspective, California’s two-year and four-year state colleges are “turning away qualified new students and shrinking their enrollments” at a rate that leaves many unable to achieve their academic goals.  A recent survey by the Chancellor’s office of the California Community College System says that course sections have been reduced by 24 percent, and more than 472,000 of the system’s 2.4 million students were put on waiting lists for fall classes.

At MOOCs like Coursera, offering web-based courses is the first step in increasing access to education for millions of people around the world.  But for many students, much of the value of taking a course is lost if that course is not helpful in allowing them to obtain a degree.  To help address this limitation, we recently announced a collaboration with American Council on Education (ACE) to begin a credit-equivalence evaluation of some courses offered on Coursera -- which means that in the future, students will potentially have the opportunity to receive college transfer credit at institutions choosing to accept the ACE recommendations.  This move is well in line with the current trend to provide students with credit for prior learning (including on-the-job training) and for competency, a trend whose aim is to increase completion rate and reduce time to completion.

There are already a few schools that are experimenting with credit for courses offered by MOOC platforms. In May of this year, the University of Helsinki’s Department of Computer Science announced that students who took our Human-Computer Interaction course would be “granted the same credit that they would get attending the department’s own HCI course.”

Offering credit equivalency for web-based courses will have an especially big impact on non-traditional college students, who might not have as much time to attend classes in-person due to work, family or financial demands. According to The National Center for Education Statistics (as reported by The Atlantic), non-traditional students -- students over age 25 -- actually make up 38 percent of the higher education student population. Moreover, 37 percent of students are only enrolled in school part-time and 32 percent of students work full-time jobs.

As the average age of college students rises (by 2020, students age 25 and over are expected to represent 42 percent of the population of total enrolled students, according to data from The National Center for Education Statistics), having to attend classes while also holding down a job or taking care of family makes working all the way towards that final degree increasingly difficult. According to a report by Public Agenda, students who drop out of college are almost twice as likely to cite problems juggling work and school as their main problem as they are to blame tuition bills (54 percent to 31 percent).

Jeff Stern, a student in North Carolina, has started a few online courses that he hasn’t finished. He cited “personal fulfillment” as being the only motivation to stick with an online course -- but often, that’s not enough.  “Offering transfer credits would definitely motivate me to see courses through to completion,” Stern explained in an email. “As a current university student, I would definitely try to pursue more courses for credit if they fulfilled degree requirements at my school. Not only do I feel like I learn better through the online medium, but if I racked up enough credits I might have the ability to graduate earlier or be able to take different courses in the classroom – making my education more affordable and meaningful.”

Credit equivalency for online courses would also affect high school students looking to prepare for higher education. When reviewing the performance of more than 300,000 “dual enrollment” students (high school students taking classes that count for college credit), The Center for Public Education found that these students were more likely than others to graduate from high school, enroll in college, begin college at a four-year institution and stay in college at least two years. They also were more likely to enroll in college full-time, post higher GPAs, and earn more post-secondary credits than their peers. Based on this research, it’s not a stretch to assume that high school students who are able to complete online courses successfully for college credit will also be more likely to attend and graduate from college.

For those people who aren’t enrolled at brick-and-mortar schools at all, the ability to receive credit still plays a key factor in determining their eventual success with education. Online courses that transferred into college credit would allow students to test the waters and explore different courses, without cost or penalty to failure. Should these students then transfer to community colleges or universities, there’s a higher potential that they’ll be able to complete degree programs.

There’s a big piece of the puzzle that still needs some exploration and thought. If online courses will soon lead to college transfer credit, how do we ensure ethical standards are being met by the students taking these courses? Academic integrity has recently been the focus of many debates regarding online education, and at Coursera, we’re taking claims of plagiarism and other forms of cheating very seriously. As we begin to experiment with credit-equivalency, we’ll be working on building a process that lets students ensure the originality of their work. This includes requiring simple identity authentication processes and remote proctored exams through services like ProctorU.com, where students connect with a live proctor via their webcam, audio feed and desktop views via screen sharing.

Assessing MOOC courses for transfer credit is still in its earliest stages, but we’re working towards it, and encourage others to do the same. The path to completing a degree program is paved with obstacles, but with online education, we can help more students graduate, and at lower time and cost.  We’re excited to take this next step toward ensuring that all students have the opportunity to receive a college degree.