UT Austin is Moving to Online Education

Nazmus Sakib University of Texas at Austin is bringing the best they can offer to your home and that is for free. Yes, you heard it right; anyone can participate in selected UT courses without paying a dime and without even going through the rigor of admission process. UT is doing this by going online with the courses and offering them to anyone who is interested. By this, UT is now on board the current trend of offering online courses by big names of education industry li e !arvard, "#T, U$ Ber eley and so on. %hile it is not clear how much it is going to help on&campus students in education 'uality and finances, this step has great potential of creating nowledge balance and increasing accessibility to education for millions of eager students all over the world. (or a start, UT is pushing forward with four online courses from (all )*+, and five more in -pring )*+.. (ew of them are popular speciali/ation courses and some of them are basic science and mathematics courses. (or logistics, UT is 0oining an existing online learning establishment named ed1 2pronounced 3ed&ex34. 5d1 is essentially a "66$ 2"assive 6pen 6nline $ourses4 li e $oursera or Udacity though each of them has somewhat difference in focus. This platform has been very successful in terms of course subscription and global access. (or example, after rolling this system at "#T, it gathered about ,7*,*** students in first year. #n a course, there are +.7 million students and interestingly, three&forth of them are from outside of U-A. #t indicates massive footprint of this education system and global interest for advanced education. -uch popularity of online courses can be explained by some drawbac s of traditional on&campus education system. Biggest drawbac of classic education would be lac of access to education. $onsidering rising costs only, it is easy to see how the access to traditional education is restricted. At present, students at UT have to bear 879 of the costs of university compared to only :*9 about ,* years ago. That caused a raise of .,9 of tuition fees only in last decade. This rise definitely caused many parents to rethin about sending their ids to college. ;ising fees are also causing a longer graduation time and higher number of drop offs. #t would also leave many graduates under thousands of dollars of loan after school. #n addition to cost, in&campus education re'uires physical presence of student at specific time periods which may not be convenient for student who are already in a 0ob to support him<herself. $ourses that students

ta e at school may be updated and well&rounded while they are at school; but that does not guarantee that these courses will be effective when they are at their 0ob. -o, a continuous learning process should be maintained. 6nline courses are great tools for continuous education with very high degree of flexibility. 6nline courses are designed prioriti/ing the students3 convenience. As mentioned before, it is free and and can get the best teachers. #t also enables a student to get the lectures at the place and time of his<her convenience. 6nline courses help teachers to reach the audience with the most current material with least effort. -o, faculty can have more time to develop course materials and respective researches. %hile online courses supports the necessity of current days, it does have some distinct drawbac s. 6ne of the ma0or problem is difficulty to ensure proper grading. As there is no physical presence, there is chances of cheating and grading would be difficult too. !ence, degree or certificates earned through online courses may not be of any practical value. 6nline courses also presents some uni'ue challenges to teachers. As students are from varied bac ground, it is difficult to prepare the basis of lecture and setting the difficulty level. Teachers also need to eep the students attracted to the course. #t is because there is no classroom and many distractions are expected. !ence, lectures should be short and attractive. =ow, academics who are good at their topic, might not be a great showman and can see a drop of interest to his<her course. Actually, dropout rate in these courses is very high 2around >*94 which indicates lac of commitment from the consumer end. This may be attributed to lac of traditional teacher&student or student& student interaction that is present in a classroom. 5fforts to increase such interaction have been made through informal study groups and different networ ing programs. ?ue to sheer volume, grading a 'ui/ by instructor is not possible and students usually help each other in grading. -everal software have been developed to address such problems. ?espite the problems, obvious advantages are enough to draw reputed institutions into this business. Though the system is still at its initial phase, interest of the students and academic community is palpable. Administrators and faculty will closely follow the progress of these courses and feedbac from the students. 6vercoming the problems could mean that the reach of the university will increase manifolds. #t can solve current budget problems of the university and reduce financial load of the students. But then, anyone can ta e course from any university and

get a degree. Then, competition among the universities for attracting students would heavily biased to famous universities. That would create adverse effect on academic diversity and over all excellence. At this point, rise of the online courses are foreseeable. But, whether they are sustainable considering economics, diversity and excellence that is yet to see. By 0oining this program, UT is showing its interest to move ahead and try different things to reach students. @eeping a balance between on&campus education and online education would be very crucial at this point. Though, in future, we may not see much distinction between these two.

Outline
Title: UT Austin is Moving to Online Education Purpose: To discuss significance of offering online courses by UT Audience: =ewspaper ;eaders #. ?elivering the information of online course offering ##. ?etailing offered courses and logistics +. offering course schedule ). utili/ing ed1 Alatform ###. ?iscussing disadvantages of on&campus educations +. discussing tuition fee increase ). outlining challenges involving physical presence of student #B. Aresenting advantages of online education B. ?iscussing challenges of online education +. discussing credibility of grading and certification ). outlining problems from lac of interaction B#. Addressing impact of online courses on university B##. $oncluding with remar s