PUBLIC LECTURE: **SOLD OUT** Universities in 2020 � will we need them? Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and their impact

An Inquiring Minds Lecture by Associate Professor David Glance Director, UWA Centre for Software Practice.

The availability of free online university courses from the world’s most prestigious institutions threatens to bring about radical change in the way the world accesses education. The first course offered by Stanford University in this way attracted 160,000 students. For the first time, anyone with an internet connection in any part of the world can take a university course and receive a credit for it. With this access comes the possibility of millions of people who could only dream of taking courses at Harvard or MIT being able further their education and with it the range of possibilities in their lives. Critics however have been quick to raise objections: it has been done before and failed; online courses will provide no support for students who struggle; universities will give up once they discover they can’t make money from the process; and how do you verify that someone actually did the course? From an Australian perspective, there are questions of how our universities will respond to the MOOCs which are largely coming from the United States. Will the world really benefit from a US focussed view? Can Australia bring something unique to the world in both its expertise and culture? Using examples from a course that the speaker actually completed “Introduction to Sociology”, David Glance will discuss what a MOOC is, how it is run and how it is different from previous distance learning and online courses. There is no doubt that this is a huge change in the education landscape and Associate Professor Glance believes that Australia does and will have something to contribute to that change.

Cost: Free, but reservation essential. Book a seat (unreserved): http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/david-glance