The landscape of education is perpetually evolving, and the digital age has ushered in unprecedented opportunities for learning and knowledge dissemination. For nearly a month, I immersed myself in the MITx MOOC, “Leading from the Emerging Future,” on the edX platform. This highly acclaimed eight-week course by Otto Scharmer, now in its third iteration, has garnered significant global participation, attracting over 85,000 individuals from more than 183 countries in its inaugural year. A distinctive feature of this course is its emphasis on local learning hubs, with over 350 hubs established by participants to foster collaborative learning environments. At Founding Fuel, we initiated our own hub, bringing together a select group of entrepreneurs to engage with live sessions, participate in exercises, and delve into discussions and reflections on the course material.
This endeavor was conceived as an experiment to evaluate the efficacy of learning communities. Early feedback from these meet-ups has been notably positive. Participants, despite demanding work schedules, have consistently attended these sessions, demonstrating high levels of engagement for nearly three hours. They have openly shared their experiences and, more impressively, dedicated 5-7 hours weekly to coursework completion.
This experience prompts a crucial question: Why has India been relatively slow in fully embracing technology-driven learning? The need is undeniably urgent. India grapples with a scarcity of high-quality higher education institutions and a shortage of trained faculty. The logistical challenges of providing accessible education across a nation of India’s geographical magnitude through traditional brick-and-mortar infrastructure are substantial.
It is worth noting that the Indian government has been developing its own ambitious MOOC program, Swayam, for several years. While facing typical governmental project hurdles and controversies, there is optimism that Swayam will soon become fully operational. Swayam is a noteworthy initiative enabling faculty from University Grants Commission (UGC) certified institutions to offer a wide array of courses—2,000-3,000—in disciplines spanning management, engineering, and humanities on a unified platform. Crucially, students can earn up to 20% of their university credits by enrolling in and completing these online courses. This represents a significant stride forward, injecting much-needed flexibility into India’s often rigid university system. For students in remote regions like Arunachal Pradesh, Swayam offers unprecedented access to top-tier faculty previously beyond reach. Similarly, faculty gain the opportunity to extend their influence and engage with a broader learning community beyond their institutional boundaries.
However, the readiness of higher education institutions to adapt to this digital paradigm remains a question. For instance, it took IIM Bangalore (IIM-B) over two years to actively participate in the MOOC movement, largely driven by the persistence of its former director, Sushil Vachani. Today, IIM-B offers over 20 online courses on platforms like edX and Open edX, boasting nearly 300,000 enrollments, with a significant majority originating from outside India. This is a commendable beginning, particularly considering their modest, start-up-like inception in mid-2014, as Vachani shared in a Skype conversation. Recently, IIM Calcutta partnered with NIIT to introduce a blended post-graduate certificate program in general management for working professionals, highlighting the growing acceptance of online and blended learning formats.
Consider the implications for globalization. While the internationalization of IIMs has been a subject of debate, MOOCs have provided IIM-B with a swift and cost-effective means to enhance global visibility and attract students, far surpassing the reach of establishing physical campuses abroad, according to PD Jose, the current faculty head of MOOC initiatives at IIM-B. Furthermore, as newer IIMs in locations like Nagpur, Shillong, Sambalpur, and Jammu face faculty recruitment challenges, MOOCs present a valuable opportunity for blended learning models. They can alleviate the workload on existing faculty and facilitate asynchronous, self-paced learning environments. The flipped classroom model, where students engage with lecture content online before class time dedicated to interactive exercises and discussions, becomes increasingly viable.
The primary challenge, however, lies in faculty capacity building and pedagogical adaptation. Otto Scharmer’s MIT course is supported by a team of Ph.D. teaching assistants. The high quality of video content, interactive graphics, assessments, discussion forums, and access to thought leaders like Edgar Schein and Peter Senge, coupled with the course design emphasizing local hubs, have raised the benchmark for online education. While user experience (UX) improvements are always ongoing, the MITx team’s responsiveness to participant inquiries has been crucial in overcoming initial hurdles.
Next month, Vachani is scheduled to conduct faculty development programs in Bengaluru and Delhi. These initiatives are critical starting points for ambitious projects like Swayam to achieve widespread adoption and success.
Reflecting on our learning hub experience, several key insights emerge.
Firstly, the prevailing learning culture in India may still lean heavily on faculty-led instruction, potentially hindering the development of self-directed learning habits. The MITx course prioritizes self-learning and collaborative learning, although live sessions are offered. However, passive participation in live sessions without prior engagement with course materials yields limited benefit. Cultivating self-discipline is essential, and MITx employs an honor code to encourage participant accountability in coursework completion. Furthermore, group learning dynamics subtly encourage participants to keep pace with the course.
Secondly, the majority of our hub participants recognize the value of the group learning approach. Scharmer’s course is demanding, and the hub provides a crucial space for discussion and reflection. Without this community, many participants might have struggled to persevere. Echoing the model of Jaipur Rugs, Indian businesses and social organizations have a significant opportunity to establish communities of practice to address specific challenges. MITx has facilitated this by providing clear guidelines for hosting hubs while allowing for contextual adaptation at the local level.
Thirdly, the proliferation of social media and social learning platforms offers new avenues for broadening perspectives and fostering connections. Participants in our hub have engaged with the global U.Lab community on Facebook and Twitter, contributing to discussion boards on the U.Lab site, and learning from the experiences of other hubs worldwide. These virtual connections expand social networks and cultivate a sense of belonging within a community of change agents.
The evolution of MOOCs is clearly ongoing. Two years prior, Clayton Christensen and Michelle R. Weise, in a significant article in the Boston Globe, argued that MOOCs’ disruptive potential—in terms of cost, technology, and pedagogy—within the historically stagnant higher education sector is only beginning to be realized. This perspective resonates strongly.
(A shorter version of this column appeared in Business Standard)
