Ohio State to offer free online pharmacy classes for no credit

While Ohio State students are paying a higher tuition bill this academic year, anyone with Internet access and an interest in pharmacy will soon be able to take classes from OSU for free.

That new opportunity is the result of an agreement with Coursera, a company headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., which partners with universities from around the world to offer online courses for free. Coursera, which previously had partnerships with 16 universities, announced new partnerships with 17 additional universities Wednesday, including OSU.

I think that were seeing a number of very reputable schools that are considering different approaches to how they address their distance education, and as a result, these massive open online course platforms like Coursera are assuming more and more and more importance, and we have really two options, said Wayne Carlson, OSUs vice provost for undergraduate studies and dean of undergraduate education. We can kind of sit by and ignore them and do our own thing, or we can participate and be at the table for discussions about which direction this technology might take. We chose the latter.

OSU students will not be able to take Coursera courses for credit. The courses will, however, be available to people anywhere in the world at no cost.

We think that there is material and content within those two courses that people around the world can benefit from, Carlson said. In some ways we benefit indirectly as students across the world who might be taking one of the pharmacy courses that were going to be offering get excited about OSU, maybe they apply to school here, maybe theres some other way they can get involved with what we do at Ohio State.

OSUs partnership with Coursera will begin with the offering of two courses, both from the College of Pharmacy. Those courses are Generation Rx: The Science Behind Prescription Drug Abuse, a course taught by Nicole Kwiek, a clinical assistant professor of pharmacology, and Introduction to Pharmacy, which will be taught by Kenneth Hale, the colleges assistant dean of professional and external affairs and also a clinical associate professor in pharmacy practice and administration.

While OSUs partnership with Coursera could be beneficial in a variety of ways, both in the short term and long term, profit is not currently one of them. Carlson said that Coursera did not have to pay in advance for their partnership with OSU, and that theres no solid business model.

There is no revenue stream, Carlson said. So the only real advantage there is the public relations that comes with being tied to some pretty reputable schools that are also doing this. Now down the road, there may be a business plan, a revenue stream that evolves and then at that particular point, we can enter into discussions with Coursera and the partners about how that revenue is shared. There is no such revenue right now.

Coursera currently has partnerships with 33 universities. That list includes six of the universities considered to be among the top 10 nationally by U.S. News and World Report: Princeton University, Columbia University, Stanford University, Duke University, University of Pennsylvania and the California Institute of Technology.

Courseras partnerships also include seven with universities from nations outside the United States, including in Switzerland, Israel, Hong Kong, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. U.S. students are able to take courses from foreign universities through Coursera, and the same is true for international students being able to take courses from other nations, including the U.S.

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Ohio State to offer free online pharmacy classes for no credit