You're reading: Online learning takes off

Every Saturday morning, Volodymyr Flonts, a 28-year-old programmer in Kharkiv, gets together with a half- dozen friends to stare at a computer screen. No, this is not a fancy new startup.

Instead, they watch lectures posted online by Stanford University, and then they do the assignments and in the end they take an exam.

So far, Flonts has received three course certificates from Stanford, having successfully finished Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Introduction to Databases courses. But he says the papers are not his goal.

“This is absolutely another level of studying, another teaching approach,” Flonts said. “I can’t describe how cool it all is.”

The programmer says he would love to hear the lectures live, but the online courses are also very handy, since he can watch them anytime, anywhere.

It is because of this convenience that anyone across the globe can access for free those courses that in the past have been available to the privileged few who had the luxury of going to leading universities. These days, all you need  are English skills and the Internet.

In Ukraine, around 13,000 Ukrainians have already subscribed to the biggest online studies project Coursera (www.coursera.org), founded by Stanford University computer scientists Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng in January 2012.

“Ukraine is among one of the top countries in terms of number of students taking Coursera classes,” Ng told the Kyiv Post.

Initially the project was totally dedicated to computer studies, but as its popularity grew, the list expanded to 116 various coursers. Now Coursera’s website has 1 million subscribers in 196 countries. Ukraine is number 12 by the number of those willing to learn.

For Ukrainians, this is one way to bridge the gap between poor local education and modern job requirements. None of Ukraine’s 850 universities are listed in the top 500 in the world, according to the 2012 Shanghai Academic Ranking.

The coursera project is far from unique. Many top U.S. universities offer their lectures online for free on special websites, such as www.edx.org, or dedicated channels on Youtube, such as  www.youtube.com/yalecourses.



Free online education is a global trend. Online studies project Coursera has increased its subscribers in Ukraine to 13,000 people.

Critics say, however, that online education cannot substitute for a proper higher education.

“A university education is not only a range of courses, but also ground for communication that forms a person, often outside the classroom,” said Inna Sovsun, education expert at the Centre for Society Research. “Online courses can’t provide it anyway.”

University professors also say it’s difficult to teach those they can’t see.

“It is difficult to teach without getting feedback from students. Even just looking at their faces tells you whether you’re registering with them,” said Paul Offit, Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, U.S., who teaches an eight-week long vaccines course through Coursera.

Nevertheless, Offit says he will continue teaching online. “I think it’s a great way to educate a lot of people throughout the world,” he said.

One of Offit’s students, a 23-year-old interpreter from Kyiv, Ksenya Kirilishena, said this course helped to broaden her knowledge in medicine, which she has a keen interest in. Apart from vaccines, Kirilishena has also subscribed to Introduction to Pharmacology, Internet Security, Science Fiction and Finance. She is now worried she won’t have time to learn everything that she would like to.

She had no plan to pass any exams or receive certificates, though. “I need education to be more informed for taking decisions in various spheres,” she said. To compensate for lack of communications with other students, Kirilishena has set up regular meetingsc for Coursera’s subscribers in Kyiv, and created a special group in the VKontakte social network.

In July 2012, just half a year after its launch, Coursera announced that it has signed agreements with a dozen  more U.S. and European universities, including Duke University, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, University of Edinburgh and the University of Toronto. Courses from these and other leading schools will soon be available online.

Ng claims Coursera is not a rival but rather a partner of classical universities. It’s a project that offers students an additional form of studying. “Many of our partners (universities) are using their online content to improve the education of their on-campus students as well, by allowing professors to move the lecture component of courses online, thus preserving the in-class time for discussions and interactions with the students,” he said.

Ng says former students are already using Coursera certificates to get better jobs. But Ukraine lags behind in this particular trend.

Natalia Matsipura, the press officer of Head Hunter (hh.ua), an online human resources database, says Ukrainian companies still pay little attention to certificates issued even by the most prestigious universities.

However, she said companies in the IT sector, fast-moving consumer goods and those looking to fill top positions of financial companies will pay attention to international certificates. “The job market is gradually reacting to the new phenomenon. It’s just a matter of time,” Matsypura said.

Flonts said he has made a huge leap forward by studying online. “This is the main thing which distinguishes these courses from our traditional education, when you study a course for two or three semesters but can’t apply your knowledge anywhere,” he added.

Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected].