Blog 12: University Consortium to Offer Small Online Courses for Credit, Jennifer Wall November 16 2012 4:20pm

Ten major universities including, Duke, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Wake Forest, Notre Dame, and Northwestern, have come together to form a consortium called Semester Online. The consortium will offer about thirty online courses that can be taken by both current students at the universities as well as the general public. The costs of the courses will be included in the regular tuition for students currently enrolled at the participating universities but others will have to pay and actually be accepted into the courses. The courses will offer full college credit. While online college courses are nothing new, the way that the courses in the consortium will work is a new concept. They will essentially be virtual classrooms where students will be able to interact with each other just as they would in a traditional classroom. They will even be able to separate into smaller discussion groups or hold online study sessions.

As mentioned above, the concept of online courses are not new but the traditional online courses most of us have taken, do not give the same experience that the classroom does. This is important to mention because each person has his or her own, individual way of learning. Some people learn better when left completely on their own and others do better as part of a classroom. While these universities are located in the United States, the concept of online education is a global issue. Using the power of the Internet allows people in other countries to have access to high quality educational experiences. Access to the Internet is spreading quickly around the world. Even in remote locations, people can access the Internet using satellite connections. This type of connectivity will allow people to be able to have more of a freedom to choose how and where they are able to obtain an education. It may not be the solution for everyone in every situation, but it is a step in the right direction in reducing some of the educational inequality in the world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/education/duke-northwestern-to-offer-semester-online-classes.html?ref=education&_r=0