{"id":641503,"date":"2013-02-07T00:00:11","date_gmt":"2013-02-07T05:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=608298"},"modified":"2013-02-07T00:00:11","modified_gmt":"2013-02-07T05:00:11","slug":"coursera-classes-for-college-credit-five-online-courses-approved-for-credit-equivalency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/641503","title":{"rendered":"Coursera classes for college credit? Five online courses approved for credit equivalency"},"content":{"rendered":"

Massive open online classes are moving ever closer to legitimacy. Last month, Udacity<\/a> announced a partnership with San Jose State University<\/a> to pilot three online classes for college credit. And on Wednesday, Coursera<\/a> is set to announce that five of its courses have won approval from the American Council on Education (ACE) for credit equivalency.<\/p>\n

That doesn’t mean students of those courses will be guaranteed credit by traditional universities — institutions have the option to accept or decline the credit — but it indicates that the courses meet ACE’s standards. And, importantly, it creates the opportunity for Coursera students to not just use online classes to burnish a resume, but to potentially earn a degree.<\/p>\n

When Coursera first announced its decision to seek ACE approval<\/a> back in November, Coursera co-founder Andrew Ng told GigaOM:<\/p>\n

\u201cEver since we launched Coursera, we\u2019ve known that university degrees are important. We wanted a more systematic way for students to earn academic credit\u2026 This is just a step in that direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the past few months, in addition to Udacity\u2019s San Jose State partnership, a few institutions, including the University of Helsinki and the University of Washington, have unilaterally announced that they would award credit for some Coursera courses.<\/p>\n

But the ACE recommendations mean Coursera classes could be eligible for credit at potentially 2,000 U.S. colleges and universities.<\/p>\n

To be eligible for the credit, students need to sign up for the course\u2019s Signature Track, which requires them to take extra steps to validate their identity, and then take an online proctored exam (through third-party ProctorU). The Signature Track costs $60 to $90 and the proctored exam costs $30 to $99.<\/p>\n

For now, just five courses have been approved for credit equivalency, four for college credit and one for vocational credit: Pre-Calculus\u00a0from the University of California, Irvine; Introduction to Genetics and\u00a0Evolution from Duke University; Bioelectricity: A Quantitative Approach\u00a0from Duke University; Calculus: Single Variable from the University\u00a0of Pennsylvania and Algebra from the\u00a0University of California, Irvine.<\/p>\n

Momentum is certainly building behind massive open online classes (MOOCs). But it’s important to remember, as we saw this week when\u00a0Coursera was forced to suspend a class for the first time<\/a>\u00a0after complaints about technical glitches and the design of the class,\u00a0they’re\u00a0not without their limitations and are still very much evolving.<\/p>\n

Image by\u00a0jcjgphotography<\/a>\u00a0via Shutterstock.<\/em><\/p>\n

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