In our ongoing ‘On the Fringe’ series, some of TI’s brightest minds discuss today’s biggest technological trends and solving the challenges of tomorrow. This month’s guest blogger is Douglas Phillips, TI University Marketing Manager for embedded products.
Massive Open Online Courses (more commonly referred to as MOOCs), are wildly popular and huge successes. You can enroll in classes from the most elite universities – linear algebra from MIT, astrophysics at the University of California Berkeley or introduction to theory of literature at Yale. These classes can be taken by anyone, nearly anywhere in the world, and often times for free. It is just the latest evolution in the ongoing movement to improve education.
But most MOOCs up until now existed in a one-direction environment, meaning a professor will tape a series of lectures, offer a test at the end and that’s it. It’s one-way, from the screen to the student with no physical element or hands-on component at home. In a MOOC biology class for example, you don’t dissect a frog in your living room. But what if, in an electrical engineering MOOC, there was a hands-on element? That’s where TI comes in.
TI has partnered with the University of Texas at Austin for their UT.6.01x class on embedded systems. As described on the class website, this is a ‘learn-by-doing’ course that shows you how to build solutions to real-world problems using embedded systems. [The class] will unravel how electronic gadgets are designed, developed and built as embedded systems that shape the world.’ You can watch a video about the class here:
(Please visit the site to view this video)
This is really the difference in what we see the future of MOOC education to be. TI is offering the physical element of the class in the home. The Tiva C Launchpad required for this course is small and low-cost, so universities can wrap classes around them that make the at-home environment viable for online learning. For $20, a student in the far reaches of the globe can acquire our technology to help them get a higher level of education.
TI’s university program is dedicated to deploying the best and latest technology so students can learn, grow and be ready for our industry. Thirty-six thousand people registered for UT.6.01x this year, which means an exponential number of people not only get to work with TI products but get a better understanding of electrical engineering. Our hope is that great minds all over the world may decide to follow an electrical engineering career after taking this class with a unique hands-on experience that TI can provide like never before.
The University of Texas at Austin course is a real bellwether for the future of these types of MOOCs. TI is sharing this idea with many of the top engineering universities in the United States to implement similar programs.
The next great evolution in education is taking place right before our eyes, a sort of MOOC 2.0, and at TI, we’re excited to be on the ground floor of this new realm of academia.