Note on IIMBx Project

Right now, IIM Bangalore’s Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), launched on the Harvard-MIT platform edX, are an investment and the return on this investment is social impact. We want to give back to society through delivering free top-quality management education to the large numbers of interested learners in India and across the world.
Our vision is to provide management courses for young graduates, career professionals, entrepreneurs, and micro-enterprises because the principles of management that we teach are relevant for everyone – the young career professional, the aspiring entrepreneur, the grocer around the street corner, the smart homemaker and the senior citizen. Each one of them will benefit from our courses.It is possible that over time, we may be able to raise enough funds by offering MOOCs to companies and cover our investment. Furthermore, as the number of learners around the world increases significantly, even the small amount of fees paid by those who choose to receive ID verified courses, may add up and make a contribution toward meeting our cost. At this time, however, we are not worrying about a revenue model but, instead, focusing on developing the capability to use technology to create value for society at large and for our on-campus students.
In order to extract high value from this investment, it is important that we set up, through Government support and funding, a Center for Technology and Teaching Excellence to capture our learning from our MOOC initiative and share it with others.

Overview

IIMBx is a digital learning programme started by IIM Bangalore in August 2014 with the aim of using the disruptive power of technology to make business and management education accessible to learners all over India and the world. This programme delivers Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) that are delivered on the edX platform in a free and open manner to anyone with an Internet connection.

Objectives

The mission of IIMBx is to deliver world-class MOOCs in management to learners in India and across the globe and create positive social impact. Our goal is:

To make world-class management education accessible from every part of the world.
To empower less privileged learners in India through innovative use of technology.
To improve in-classroom teaching and learning.

The two main drivers for the IIMBx project are social impact and accessible education.

Delivery Design

The cornerstones for IIMBx online courses are:

High-quality Content: The online courses are produced and delivered by IIMB’s full-time faculty and are based on existing courses taught in class. Each course has a dedicated Pedagogical Research Assistant who works with the faculty to design and produce courseware. Able Instructional Design and Video Production teams assist this course team in course design and production. The courseware consists of a balanced mix of bite-sized videos, interviews, readings, quizzes, exams and discussions.

Accessibility: Online Courses from IIMBx are designed for delivery on any device with an Internet connection – be it a smart phone, tablet, laptop or desktop. The edX platform has been built with special focus on accessibility and care is taken to ensure that MOOC content is accessible to learners with visual and auditory disabilities. All IIMBx MOOCs will include transcripts for the videos in English and Hindi, with plans to include other regional language transcripts for future MOOCs.

Innovative Course Design: Our MOOCs, while following online best practices, will incorporate unique features such as case method of teaching, expert interviews, interactive quizzes, additional readings, etc. based on the principle of “active learning”.

Blended Learning: The process of designing and producing online courses has a deep positive impact on in-class teaching. Our faculty will use MOOC courseware assets to improve classroom experience of learners. For instance, in-class learners can view the lecture videos online before coming to class and use class-time for discussions; in-class learners can interact with MOOC learners through online discussion forum to foster peer learning, etc.

Budget

Annual budget to produce 10-12 MOOCs is INR 2.5 – 2.7 Crore
Average cost per MOOC is INR 18 lakh
Cost of setting up a Center for Technology and Teaching Excellence to capture our learning from our MOOC initiative and share it with others is INR 35-40 Crore

Impact

As of 18 July 2015, there are close to 40,000 enrollments for the first four MOOCs from IIMBx, with more than 35% participation from India.

In order to achieve the Prime Minister’s vision of “Make in India”, there is a need to up skill more than 6 million youth of the nation. This cannot be achieved using real estate based education and online courses provide the technology-based solution to bridge this gap. IIMBx aims to take management skills and education to India’s young graduates, homemakers, working professionals, other management schools, microenterprises, small business owners and lifelong learners, by providing free and open education on a massive scale.

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