Delhi University will have Massively Open Online Courses

Delhi University is serious about the Massively Open Online Courses (MOOC), or at least the promise of mass-dissemination of information through the Internet.

It is a member of Global Problem-Solving Consortium, among eight Universities, which allowed its students and faculty free access to a MOOC on "Confronting Global Challenges" in October. Lady Shri Ram College's psychology students completed an eight week course in October;

Divyanshi Chugh, third year psychology student at LSR, who had an idea of getting her classmate to sign up for a course on social psychology by the Wesleyan University through Coursera says they started on 12th August with about 45 students signing up. "In our college we have slots for extra curricular activities every week. We used these slots on Tuesdays and Fridays," says Divyanshi Chugh.

"First, the course is free," she says enumerating the advantages of MOOCs, "then the courses are more grounded in applications. For instance, we have to analyse a website and design our resumes based on principles of social psychology. These were then peer-reviewed, by other taking the course."

While many others through with their mainstream, class-based education or never went at all, Chugh explains that combining a MOOC with classroom exercise has its advantages. "The dropout rate is very high for MOOCs," she says, "but with 25 of us doing it together and the faculty being involved helped."