Thought Leaders in Online Education: Clara Piloto, Director of Global Programs at MIT Professional Education (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Who’s paying? Is it all companies paying?

Clara Piloto: It’s a combination. A lot of individuals are self-funding but there are a lot of companies that have tuition assistance. I believe the larger number is self-funding. 

Sramana Mitra: If you segment the different areas where you offer professional education in, what is the next level detail in each of them? I can imagine real estate is different in different countries. What are the region-specific nuances in the different segments that you describe?

Clara Piloto: It’s exploding not just for our in-person courses, but people are also asking for digital transformation type of courses. They want to learn more about the fourth industrial revolution. We have a lot of interest in artificial intelligence, IoT, robotics, quantum computing, and other emerging technologies.

The in-person courses that are filling up quickly tend to be courses in these areas, especially machine learning. We recently just launched a professional certificate and digital transformation made up of five courses that you take over a nine-month period online. It’s approximately 300 contact hours.

That has been very popular and growing. That’s our sweet spot in general. People are very interested in those types of courses. That’s globally.

Sramana Mitra: What is the credentialing of this? Is there a diploma?

Clara Piloto: There are three credentials that we offer. When you complete one of our programs, you’ll receive a certificate of completion from MIT Professional Education. It’s well-recognized.

In addition, we offer MIT Continuing Education units. CEU’s tend to be a bit more popular in the US. Outside of the US, a very small percentage of our audience is interested in continuing education units. Finally, we offer a professional certificate. We offer a diploma for that.

The professional certificate is usually made up anywhere from four to five courses. They can sometimes take in-person classes once every two years to complete online. It takes nine months on average to complete. We’ve also experimented with micro-courses. Those would be also be awarded certificates of completion.

Sramana Mitra: What is the plan for the next five years? What direction do you want to take this program? What are you learning from the market? What do people want to learn that MIT can add value in a differentiated way?

I’m going to situate this in a context. I’ve been talking for years with Anant Agarwal about edX. The question I’m toying with is, what is the positioning and the strategy for professional education from MIT vis-a-vis online learning?

Clara Piloto: We’re investing a lot in our online and blended programs. I really feel blended is one of those trends that is catching on fire. How I define blended is it’s an online experience. It’s very collaborative. It can also include in-person events and in-person workshops.

I’m noticing a lot of corporations that are curious and are requesting blended. Some of them might not even quite understand what that means exactly but they feel that they want that. The big growth in our enrollment numbers is online and online in other languages.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Thought Leaders in Online Education: Clara Piloto, Director of Global Programs at MIT Professional Education
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