More than 12,000 people have registered for four online courses that Ukrainian universities are offering on Prometheus, a non-profit web platform created in Ukraine. It is the first large-scale massive open online courses (MOOC) project launched locally. Internationally, MOOCs are a popular knowledge delivery tool.
Announced on Oct. 15, Prometheus is an online platform where universities can host their courses for free. In addition, the platform’s team creates university courses for some $5,000.
The four courses being offered are Ukrainian History, Financial Management, Algorithm Development and Analysis, and Python Programming Fundamentals. The first two are set to start in early November, while the rest will kick off in January. Courses are taught in Ukrainian by lecturers from Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Taras Shevchenko National University and Kyiv Mohyla Business School.
Prometheus co-founder Ivan Prymachenko believes that international MOOCs like Coursera can’t replace a local platform.” Some of the courses are unique for Ukraine. I don’t think that we’ll ever see Ukrainian History or Financial Management adapted to Ukrainian rules on Coursera,” he said.
Another reason is insufficient knowledge of English among Ukrainians to take internationally-run courses.
A typical MOOC consists of a series of video lectures, interactive quizzes, homework assignments, and a final exam. Each course usually also has its own discussion forum where students can ask each other and teachers questions.
First steps in project
A PhD student at Shevchenko University, Prymachenko co-founded Prometheus with Oleksii Molchanovskyi, an information technologies teacher at Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. They have yet to find funding for the project. Luckily, they managed to save a lot by using open-source solutions.
“The first four courses were created by volunteers,” Prymachenko said. “Also, many people offered to help. For example, data center Parkovyi gave us a server and is hosting it for free.”
Apart from the two co-founders, the team consists of a designer, videographer, director, and press secretary.
“Obviously we can’t keep going for long just on (our) enthusiasm,” said Molchanovskyi. “Ivan and I can work just for the idea, but we need to pay the videographer, director and others.”
After the first courses begin, Prometheus co-founders will plan to raise funds from donors and businesses that could sponsor courses in certain areas, like software development or business skills. In the far future, the co-founders are considering launching a for-profit branch of Prometheus, however its core functionality will remain free for both users and universities.
“If we were doing it for money, we’d have to cut quite a few courses in fields such as history, cultural studies, or Ukrainian literature, because how can you make money on those?” said Prymachenko.
His partner, Molchanovskyi, shares the opinion. Most prospective online students, almost 8,000, registered for Financial Management and Python Programming, while Ukrainian History and Algorithms each attracted about 2,000 students.
The co-founders told the Kyiv Post that about 10 percent of the users enrolled for courses on Prometheus are older than 55, while the core audience is aged between 26 and 35 years. Geographically, Kyiv is the leader in terms of registrations, followed by Lviv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and Donetsk. Curiously, among the top 10 regions is also the Netherlands.
Hybrid education
For major international MOOCs like Udacity, Coursera, or edX, the course completion rate is about 10 percent. Prometheus co-founders don’t think that their result will be any better, but emphasize that it’s still “more people than one lecturer can teach in a few years.”
An additional benefit of online courses is their openness, which allows users of different ages and geography to access university-level education. It’s especially convenient for people living with disabilities and those with complicated schedules, where flexibility is required for time management.
The goal of Prometheus for the next five years is to increase the number of courses to 150 and link them into comprehensive study programs in fields ranging from technical disciplines to journalism and the arts. The fundamental idea, however, is to embed MOOCs into the educational process at universities.
There are mandatory courses at each university that have little to do with one’s major field of study – like Ukrainian history, explains Prymachenko, for whom it happens to be the main area of interest. “In most universities it’s taught awfully. But we can create one good course from a top teacher and give it to those universities who want it. Video lectures would replace (traditional) lectures…so that a (classroom) teacher would be able to focus on things that can’t be performed online, like seminars, individual work, etc.”
Doing what’s known as eating his own dog food, Molchanovskyi is already testing this idea on his students in Kyiv Polytechnic Institute enrolled for the Algorithms course. They don’t come to lectures but watch them online instead. The university’s administration looks at Molchanovskyi’s experiments with understanding and doesn’t interfere.
Andrii Degeler is the Kyiv Post’s information technology reporting fellow. Degeler has been covering the IT business in Ukraine and internationally since 2009. His fellowship is sponsored by AVentures Capital, Ciklum, FISON and SoftServe. He can be reached on Twitter (@shlema) or [email protected].
