U. spends $250,000 on online learning platform

The Coursera platform, which offers certain online classes to everyone with access to the Internet, has cost the University about $250,000 to implement, a figure that was publicized for the first time at last week’s faculty meeting.

The money supports faculty and graduate student assistants who are developing the online offerings and video lectures. Professors participating in Coursera do not receive any raise in their standard University salaries; the incentive to teach online classes largely relies on their interest in providing a unique learning experience for students and bringing their content to a world audience.

The $250,000 figure includes the cost of utilizing the broadcast facilities in creating the video lectures, according to Deputy Dean of the College Clayton Marsh ’85.

Sedgewick, who instructs an algorithms class on Coursera with computer science professor Kevin Wayne, said it is premature to put dollars and cents on the effort since the most expensive part of participating in Coursera is content creation. Sedgewick and Wayne’s course, for instance, has been honed over 20 years of teaching.

Electrical engineering professor Mung Chiang, whose course ELE 381: Networks: Friends, Money and Bytes is on Coursera, said that, while he wishes there were a salary raise for developing content for Coursera, he thought there should not be one.

“[Free online courses] can be and should be inexpensive,” Chiang said. “We don’t need a broadcast center, a camera crew or extensive video editing.”

Sedgewick said he believes Coursera, in partnership with the University, has produced the best product of its type to date mainly because the video lectures are so sophisticated. Free online courses are no longer made using laptop cameras as they were when Salman Khan created Khan Academy with no financial backing in 2006.

This year’s course proposal worksheets for the 250th Anniversary Fund for Innovation in Undergraduate Experience, sent out to each department every fall, have been expanded to include professors interested in developing a course for Coursera. Ideas for new courses professors don’t want to be on Coursera will still be considered, according to Marsh.

It’s too early to tell how effective Coursera has been. The website also highlights a number of questions to be considered by the higher-learning institutions that choose to participate. The first is the question of whether individuals can receive University credit or some type of certificate of accomplishment once a course has concluded.

“We’re not prepared to issue any statement of accomplishment at this time because there are so many unknowns surrounding this area,” Marsh said, referring to worldwide users outside of the University who take courses on Coursera. “Our main priority is to improve teaching and learning on campus.”

Professors whose courses are on Coursera agree the certificate should not be important and have generally seen that participants are not in search of distinction — only to learn the material.

History professor Jeremy Adelman, who teaches HIS 201: A History of the World since 1300, said that, while he has seen high attrition rates for his course and low attendance at his weekly global dialogues, the students who stay tuned really want to learn.

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“If students are motivated for a Princeton certificate of some kind, that would affect the way the course went,” Adelman said. “My goal is to use the tool to deliver a great teaching experience for Princeton students. If a byproduct of this is that kids around the world learn too, great.”

Chiang said he believes some type of certificate of completion is necessary for this technology to be truly effective. He said a majority of the world viewers are 30- and 40-year-olds and that there is no incentive for them to make time for these difficult courses unless there is something to show for it. A certificate would also create some urgency for students to finish the course in a timely fashion since the demographic has no common timetable or common goals, he said.

Marsh noted the University’s contract with Coursera is very flexible and that either party can walk away at any time. Coursera is a profit-seeking company that is exploring ideas for creating revenue, since it is backed by Silicon Valley venture capitalists.

In the future, Chiang believes the University should create its own interface nonprofit, as has been done by Harvard and MIT with edX, Yale with Open Yale and Stanford last month with Education 2 Go.

“Why don’t we do it ourselves?” Chiang said. “We should take it into our own hands.”