IIM B Makes IIN Reality: Study Anytime, Anywhere for Free With Open Online Courses

IDEA presented old wine in a new bottle, its internet network as IIN, creating a mock academy out of a plain jane internet network. That the internet provides access to knowledge is well known – what online learners struggle to find is reliable, well presented, and high quality information. Now IIM Bangalore is making anytime, anywhere learning a reality with free Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). IIM B will launch eight courses by December 2015 in partnership with edX, a not-for-profit online initiative of Harvard and MIT that offers online courses from the world’s top universities and organisations.

The future of education is online; the vast Indian talent pool has traditionally been handicapped by physical capacity constraints of premier educational institutions. Only the very best would qualify to partake of such knowledge, while an equally deserving majority had been deprived of it.

Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) now provides the opportunity to all the deserving talent through IIMBx – a platform to offer free Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) through edX – a non-profit online initiative by MIT and Harvard.

A massive open online course is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web through filmed lectures, readings, and problem sets.

IIM B is the only Indian management school to offer free online management and business education through edX platform. 

Sharing his vision on the launch of first four MOOCs, Dr. Sushil Vachani, Director, IIM Bangalore said, “Our first promise is that of massive reach. Associate with that promise of massive reach is an enormous opportunity for social impact. We want to reach out to the masses and make the power of technology accessible to everyone by highlighting on the quality and designing the courses carefully to make it easily delivered to all. We also plan to introduce various regional transcript to reach learners of India”. 

“As IIMBx, India’s leading B-school will leverage new technologies and deliver education via MOOCs. Handpicked courses taught by some of our eminent faculty will be offered free of cost as MOOCs through the edX platform. One of the many benefits of MOOC is continuous learning made convenient in every form of various gizmos we use today” he explained. 

A course on ‘Statistics for Business’ will be first to roll off the blocks on July 07 and has seen over 5000 registrations already. Courses on Innovation and IT Management and Introduction to Operations Management follow in the month of July and August. 

“We have received an overwhelming response from participants, with about 10000 registrations within a short span of rolling out courses. IIMBx will launch around ten courses in the first year. The response to these courses will be carefully monitored and analyzed so that we not only improve the design of future MOOCs, but also use our learning from MOOCs to enhance the educational experience of our students enrolled in on-campus programs,” explained  Dr. Vachani. 

“If we have to achieve our prime minister’s vision of ‘Make in India’ we have to upgrade the skill of the vast majority of workers and we have to provide support to all those people who are struggling at it”, he added.

With over 600 million people under the age of 25 and a struggling traditional system to support the growing world economy in the world, an analysis is that it would require over 1500 campuses and even more qualified pedagogy, to staff and up-skill. Given the challenges and the need to up skill the talent, the HRD Ministry announced the introduction of MOOCs to offer free short term courses that provide certificates across subjects from premier institutes. IIMBx is in line with the initiative to integrate technology and provide free world class education to anyone interested in learning.

“Today we already have about four and half million students from across the globe on our platform and over five lakh students are from India. We are honored to welcome IIM Bangalore to edX. A leading management school in India, IIMB will deliver high quality courses and new perspectives to the edX learning community and reach learners around the world,” said Professor Anant Agarwal, CEO – edX, on the partnership with IIMB.

MOOCs is a powerful force in the online education that has opened doors to quality education in every corner of the world. As the potential impact of this program is very broad, IIMBx will reach a much wider and diverse spectrum of learners across India and around the world, ranging from students wanting to broaden their horizons, to teachers looking to enhance their pedagogy.

The IIMBx MOOCs embrace the “active learning” methodology by giving the learner the opportunity to employ various learning modalities – listening, watching, reading and acting on the knowledge gained. Each concept is explained using a carefully designed learning sequence that intersperses byte-sized videos with quizzes, readings and assignments. Discussion forums with thought-provoking questions add to the peer learning experience.