A new kind of learning experience with Udacity and Coursera
In need of providing enrichment opportunities for your students then look no further than Udacity and Coursera. Both sites provide short courses in a range of topics that can be completed online with opportunities for accreditation and meet ups / study groups with like minded students.
Udacity was founded by two professors from Stanford University and currently offers eleven courses ranging from building a web browser to programming a robotic car.
Coursera is a social entrepreneurship company that partners with universities predominately from the United States to provide an increasingly extensive range of free online courses. Edinburgh University is currently the only UK university involved in the project with six courses of 5-7 weeks duration starting in 2013.
As the number of courses increase and the level of student engagement increase (160,000 plus enrolled for Udacity’s statistics course) there is a sense that the development of these two sites might just provide the catalyst for a widespread revolution on how course are not only taught in higher education but in schools.
