It’s the next step in the evolution of Massive Open Online Courses - MOOCs: People who pass the courses from players such as Coursera, edX or Udacity should be able to receive college credit… not just certificates or badges.

The big story this week is that Coursera is in talks with the American Council on Education to grant degrees for online classes offered through the network of MOOC courses that are currently free and not-for-credit. For that to happen, the parties would have to ensure they could prevent cheating and meet other academic standards. Colleges would also have to decide whether they accept Coursera credits. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is funding the review and several other MOOC-related developments.

If ACE and Coursera begin offering courses for credit, colleges will face an interesting dilemma. Accepting Coursera credit and offering MOOC courses could mean lost revenue and disruption to the model of online, for-profit colleges as well as traditional colleges. Strategically, however, using such courses raises the profile and flexibility of these colleges. Undoubtedly, the move would be appreciated by students who are facing increases in tuition and staggering loads of debt.

This is a proper shift in the balance of power to students. It has the potential to increase graduation rates both domestically and abroad. It also has the potential to bring down those soaring tuition costs.

We survey how several media outlets reported this next step in the MOOC story:

Jeffrey R. Young writes in The Chronicle of Higher Education: 

The American Council on Education has agreed to review a handful of free online courses offered by elite universities and may recommend that other colleges grant credit for them.

The move could lead to a world in which many students graduate from traditional colleges faster by taking self-guided courses on the side, taught free by professors from Stanford University, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and other well-known colleges.

In what leaders describe as a pilot project, the group will consider five to 10 massive open online courses, or MOOC’s, offered through Coursera for possible inclusion in the council’s College Credit Recommendation Service. That service has been around since the 1970s and focuses on certifying training courses, offered outside of traditional colleges, for which students might want college credit. McDonald’s Hamburger University, for example, is among the hundreds of institutions with courses certified through ACE Credit, as the service is known. Last year, a provider of low-cost online courses called StraighterLine became one of the first online institutions to win inclusion in the recommendation service.

ACE also announced on Tuesday that it will set up a Presidential Innovation Lab that will bring together college leaders to discuss the potential of MOOC’s and new business models for higher education. The lab is supported by an $895,453 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as part of about $3-million in new MOOC-related grants announced Tuesday.

Via Chronicle of Higher Education

A stamp of approval from the organization could enhance the value of MOOCs to universities and lead to lower tuition costs for students, who could earn credit toward a college degree for passing a particular course. At issue is whether the quality of the courses offered through MOOCs are equivalent to similar courses offered in traditional classrooms.

The popularity of MOOCs, which have been around for barely a year, has intensified quickly. Top faculty at dozens of the world’s most elite colleges and universities are teaching hundreds of online courses in a variety of disciplines to millions of students around the world. The courses are free, but they don’t count toward traditional degree programs.

“MOOCs are an intriguing, innovative new approach that holds much promise for engaging students across the country and around the world, as well as for helping colleges and universities broaden their reach,” says Molly Corbett Broad, president of the council. “But as with any new approach, there are many questions about long-term potential, and ACE is eager to help answer them.”

Part of the council’s plan, announced Tuesday and beginning next year, involves teams of faculty that will examine the content and rigor of particular courses to evaluate whether they should be recommended for college credit. Central to that activity is a division of the council, called ACE CREDIT, that was created in 1974 to help adults gain credit for courses and exams taken outside traditional degree programs. The team makes recommendations and provides transcripts for documentation, but it would be up to individual schools whether to accept the course for credit.

Via USAToday

Steve Kolowich at InsideHigherEd writes in October: