Summary

Online Education Grows Up, And For Now, It's Free

       Online Education generated in the 1990 s,  but its speed and scale keep growing. Many of the most famous universities enrolled online classes in 2012, such as Stanford, Oxford and Princeton. Coursera, as a consortium, cooperated with more than 30 of the top universities to offer online classes for free. One student named Askhat Murzabayev learned in a small university on Kazahkstan, finally got a satisfied job with the certificate from online classes.
        Stanford professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller founded Coursera. There are 1.5 million students who have enrolled the one of 200 classes from 33 universities offered by Coursera now.   Koller said  physical institutions will still  be important since there is still certain aspects  that they can't replicate in an online format. But online education help students getting an value education and it helps employers and organizations to close skills gaps as well. She also mentioned online classed can mold real classed with less lecture time and more interaction.
       There are two goals: one is to democratize education, the other is about money. Online classes can help students get jobs via offering them a certificate, while it changed the universities operating way. Rock said more and more audience will access to the online courses, this also might help professors spend much less time in a passive way. Rock pointed nominal fees could make that offerings a lucrative possibility in the future.       
        Coursera is a for-profit company, so it might be to charge a fee for certification in the future. Koller believe employers would help online education because there are still  large number of unfilled jobs. Koller pointed that improving the all lever education is what they are succeeding most.
       Law professor Ed Rock coordinates UPenn's online program said universities should shape themselves to fit the new situation brought by tech. Ed think it is amazing for professor to teach much more students at same time.  For example, Professor Michael Kearns once taught a class only 100 students in the class, but more than 40,000 students are also taking the online version of his course.
        At the end of the article, Author said there are still many kinks to be work out, such as how to make sure no one is cheating, Another is how to evaluate essays.