(MOOC rhymes with Luke)

Attending a graduate course at Berkeley isn’t easy to make happen at the moment. Nor is it very feasible for me to visit one of the most compelling schools in the world, High Tech High in San Diego, despite my desire. Life has me fully occupied in Etobicoke right now.

No problem. I have my MOOC.

MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Courses, and they’re playing a transformational role in education. They’re offered by renowned universities around the world, delivered by their esteemed professors, and they’re free to anyone who can access the internet. There’s either no or minimal assessment (only completed if desired), which many would agree is a plus. And there’s no credit at the end. For your time, you just get to learn.

The MOOC I’m following is a joint project between the Berkeley Graduate School of Education and the celebrity educator and founder of High Tech High Schools, Larry Rosenstock. The topic: New School Creation – timely, given our exciting work around the KCS Senior Campus. But that’s just my MOOC.

Millions of lifelong learners from all walks of life and corners of the world are signing up for MOOCs that meet their needs and interests. MIT, Stanford, and Harvard are among the many that offer dozens of courses in all of their faculties, all for no cost and no troublesome admissions process. Art, architecture, chemistry, engineering, business, medicine…you name it, you can learn it. EdX, Coursera, MOOC List and Udacity are now popular go-to sites where you can browse for the university instruction of your dreams.

Formal education has evolved into a pretty complex enterprise.  MOOCs, for all their reliance on technology, bring education back to its roots. Willing learners, learning.

If going back to university, for free, at your convenience, and without concern over prerequisites and grades is a way you’d like to be a lifelong learner, rejoice, and get online. I found the perfect MOOC for me. Yours waits for you.

Andrea Fanjoy,
Assistant Head, Academics
You can follow Andrea on Twitter @afanjoy.