[The following is an essay for a school assignment. I by no means have covered the actual scope of this topic.]

A massive open online course or MOOC for short is a course taken online aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the internet. In this essay I plan to examine if MOOCs can be a viable option to be included into the Indian high school education system.

A standard argument raised against the use of modern computing systems in our education system is that are very expensive. But before we do that we must look into the current investment that we make into our textbooks. A standard textbook and notebook bundle for one academic year is roughly 5000 rupees. These are in most cases government issued and printed(NCERT) textbooks printed in 2–3 colours and commonly have a page or two defected. But with the incoming of entry level tablets and computers like the Aakash tablet(2,499 rupees) and XO laptop(10,000 rupees) designed at MIT for third world countries we see that entry level computing devices are almost half the price of the textbook bundle bought every year and comparatively higher end computers that will last more than 2 years coming in at double the price.

The biggest hurdle till a few years back was Internet. Video lecture streaming and data consumption of MOOCs can be a lot and internet wasn’t available everywhere. Therefore, the cost for accessing these was a lot and not feasible for the common indian high school student. But due to the recent developments of technology(incoming of 4G) in internet accessibility and competition by various providers, we see that internet can be found in the smallest of towns in India and costs for accessing the internet has exponentially come down as compared to what it was just 5–7 years back.

Even though we see more accessibility and availability to the internet, the implementation of something like this cannot be done in a country like india without comprehensive tests and case studies due to the scale. It also gives rise to even larger questions about how testing can be done on a platform like this as will make it very easy for students to jeopardize their ethics.

We might also see a decline in the amount of questions asked in class and a drop in student teacher interaction but this topic is very debatable. I personally feel it would make more time for real interaction as more attention would be paid to problem solving and discussing ideas rather than information being bombarded on students.

Though a MOOCs platform might not be very feasible at the moment for large scale deployment as a supplement to the CBSE high school education system. Creating a repository with video or audio lectures and digital versions of textbooks and question banks is a start. A future goal can be to create an online forum for discussion of doubts.

Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education.” The purpose of MOOCs is not to replace teachers rather, it is to promote actual teacher student interaction. In our current system, most classes are just teachers imparting information that is now easily available and occasionally testing students upon how much they grasped off it. Our country needs thinkers, people who can solve problems. It’s time we focused on this and using modern teaching methods like MOOCs are definitely a step forward.