By Mike Lesczinski, Excelsior Life News Staff

Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have taken the higher education industry by storm. However, many are left wondering what legacy MOOCs will leave since course takers may have no way to prove learning outcomes.  Or do they?

Excelsior College, a private nonprofit which has been offering competency-based degrees since its founding in 1971, is working to change that. By matching content in MOOCs offered through MIT, Johns Hopkins, Saylor and others to 31 of its existing Excelsior College Examinations (ECE), Excelsior has provided a means for students to demonstrate knowledge gained through the use of free open educational resources such as MOOCs.

Any student studying independently, including those using a MOOC, can demonstrate his or her mastery of the topic through an ECE; those earn at least a “C” will receive transcripted college credit.

In this Excelsior Life video, Mark Michalisin of Excelsior College’s Center for Educational Measurement (CEM), discusses how Excelsior is matching up MOOCs as study resources to its exams , which are developed by Excelsior’s national faculty and have been evaluated for college-level credit by the American Council on Education.

 

Michalisin recently joined Mika Hoffman, executive director for CEM, in presenting at the 2012 Association of Test Publishers (ATP) in Berlin, Germany on this very topic: “Matching Assessments to Open Educational Resources.”

 Hoffman and Michaelisin focused on identity verification, assessment quality, appropriateness of content, scalability and other aspects of validating learning achieved via the use of MOOCs and other online educational resources.