Cows Go MOOCs by Michelle Stevens

Cows Go MOOCs

What are MOOCs? At first, it seems like some type of Girl Scout cookie, but MOOCs are much better than that. MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course. It’s massively open because the classes are available to a wide variety of people, anybody with an internet connection in fact. Online classes used to be exclusive at the universities, who charged tuition for credit to be given upon completion. The professor was there for you along the way, so those courses weren’t independent of the Brick and Mortar University. MOOCs can be free and independent of the university. They offer a super affordable route to a degree. However, cheap MOOCs may cause Universities to raise their tuitions in order to fund such programs. Or the site may require a “subscription fee.” MOOCs can enroll hundreds of thousands of students, and are especially popular this year. Ivy League and other prestigious schools have come together to form a few major MOOC companies. Udacity has enrolled 150,000 students. Harvard and MIT formed “edX” which enrolled 370,000 students. Princeton, Brown, and Columbia started Coursera, which has 1.7 million participants.

The MOOCs offer higher education for all regardless of race, religion, or creed. There are no set limits of seats to fill so anyone can enroll. However, it takes discipline to complete a college course via the World Wide Web, many drop out, and few actually stick with it. Those are the committed few who receive a certificate, though nobody’s actually sure what that means yet. Nevertheless, MOOCs still offer the education required for some online degrees. However, they mostly focus on the math and sciences, while people are trying to figure out how to incorporate the humanities, and pertaining to this essay, agriculture.
We should invest in MOOCs by making them available to rural areas and use MOOCs to improve those rural communities. Some ways in which they can improve these rural areas are:
aid in better design, execution, and welfare of the community, make agriculture more efficient and productive, increase availability of resources and improve global awareness. MOOCs are a great way to increase basic networking and communication skills to those often lacking in rural areas. MOOCs can spark interest in agriculture and teach basic farming skills early on. MOOCs can be made available to everyone no matter where they live if we just invest. The results will be especially significant in rural areas and the recipients eternally grateful.
So what are MOOCs? Massive Open Online Courses that are becoming increasingly popular as an educational alternative or in addition to Brick and Mortar Universities. Not only can MOOCs be an educational learning place for people everywhere, but it also has many other benefits as well. Anyone can take the courses, lectures are online, and get this, they’re free. That is, unless the company decides to charge a monthly “subscription” fee, or better yet, the money starts coming out of the paycheck for MOOC taxes. For now, tutorials are mostly free-of-charge and the library is endless. However, it is a bit difficult to find a MOOC course on Agriculture or the Humanities. And how will these courses be graded? Will they require a professor? These are all questions that will be addressed later on.
MOOCs in Agriculture is not a widely discussed topic. Nevertheless, there are articles about MOOCs themselves, and online farming, so why not improve the two to improve those agricultural communities? Farmers are falling increasingly further behind technology, and MOOCs are a great chance to change that. By investing in MOOCs and making them available to those who live in the areas, it can incorporate that technology to the field. One skilled farmer in Alabama can teach another across the world. It’s like the Indians who taught the Pilgrims to put fish in the ground to grow crops better. If it weren’t for Columbus and sailing across the sea, we would have never known. MOOCs are like the modern day Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria.
Not only can MOOCs be an educational learning place for people everywhere, but it also has many other benefits as well. People can actually be learning from home instead of bumming on a log. They can meet people across the globe via video chat, share interests with virtual clubs, and teach their trade via live chat rooms. MOOCs are a relatively new resource, only recently been made available but soon to be very popular. We need MOOCs to foster social skills in communities that are lacking. When talking to people across the world, they can see what it’s like on the other side and become more open-minded and ready to come up with new ideas. Two heads are better than one, they say.
However, the problem arises when those in rural communities don’t have access to the internet. It is crucial for a well-rounded education and a lack of internet can be a road block to learning. In one article, a student named Dakota has to drive 40 miles to college in pursuit of a two-year degree. He lacks high-speed internet at home, and stays on campus as long as he can to reap the benefits and do his homework. This is unfair to those living in rural communities, and if the internet was available in his home, he could take a MOOC and not even have to commute in the first place. This is why MOOCs should be heavily invested in, so that education can be brought to these people.
A huge problem with Brick and Mortar universities is the issue of acceptance and discrimination. There have been Supreme Court Cases such as University of California v. Bakke that deal with affirmative action, and rule whether or not specific quotas of seats should be set aside for minorities. According to the second source, increased diversity is also evident in rural America, many of which are immigrants and people of color. MOOCs can eliminate the issue of racial profiling or segregation by allowing anyone to take the course. This will make getting an
education readily available regardless of religion, color, etc. MOOCs do not require an application for admittance, nor do they have a limited amount of spots to fill.
In an attempt to solve the first issue of the lack of internet in rural areas, the Federal Communications Commission has funded 4.5 billion dollars to service Americans without internet. The students have felt the effects of this institution.