April 4 2016, 16.59 PM IST || Pocket News Alert
First Scholarship will be awarded in July 2016 – Open for Indian Students
New Delhi, 4th April, 2016: Macquarie University, one of Australia’s Top Ten universities, launched the Big History: Connecting Knowledge Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) available through the COURSERA® platform in 2015 http://ift.tt/1NL9g4m. This program provides students a powerful framework to address complex real-world challenges.
Launched in December 2015, Big History: Connecting Knowledge features 20 academics from across Macquarie University. A 6-week program, it is a unique and epic trans-disciplinary journey that begins 13.8 billion years ago with the Big Bang and traverses time to the present exploring how our universe and our world has evolved from incredible simplicity to ever-increasing complexity and discover the important links between past, current, and future events.
The Big History: Connecting Knowledge MOOC has won rave reviews from across the globe. In a short span of 3 months, over 11,000 learners from over 100 countries have enrolled in the course with India constituting 5.9% of the total enrolled students, surpassing the likes of United Kingdom, Spain and Germany, coming only third in line after the USA and China, who stand at 25% and 8.9%, respectively.
Macquarie University has now announced the Big History International Student Undergraduate Scholarship http://ift.tt/1ouAV03 which is available to all international students who apply for any undergraduate course at Macquarie University and have verified completion of the Big History: Connecting Knowledge MOOC available through the COURSERA® platform.
The scholarships will cover all tuition fees which, depending on the program of study, will be up to $50,000 AUD per year for an undergraduate degree of 3-4 years duration. This represents a value of 2.5 million or INR 25 lakhs per year, potentially over 4 years, for a total value of 10 million rupees, or INR 1 crore. The first ever Big History International Student Scholarship will be awarded in mid-2016. Indian students who enroll in the MOOC and finish the six week course will be eligible for selection. The deadline to apply is 30th June, 2016. After June 30, all applications would be considered for the 2017 scholarship.
Speaking about the scholarship, Mr. Andrew McKenna, Executive Director of the Big History Institute at Macquarie University said, “We are thrilled to announce the Big History International Undergraduate scholarship. Given the enthusiastic embrace of the Big History MOOC on Coursera by Indian students, I think Indian students will be very competitive. I am not surprised India is so interested in Big History – there is a lot of synergy. Big History is about humanity, our world, and our future. India is a vibrant nation that represents a large and growing proportion of humanity, and as a rising power India is tremendously important to the world. And what is absolutely certain is that the future of everyone on the planet will continue to be impacted by the innovation and talent coming out of India. It is great to have the scholarship in place, and I am sure we will see more Indian students enrolling in our groundbreaking MOOC to take full advantage of this fantastic opportunity.”
About Macquarie University:
Established in Sydney in 1964, Macquarie University is consistently ranked amongst the Top 10 universities in Australia (ARWU, 2014) and Top 250 in the world (QS, 2014). It was created during a time of extraordinary social transformation to be a different kind of university: it was, and will always be, a bold experiment in higher education. True to its founders' vision, the University has challenged the conventional thinking of academia through innovations in its campus set-up, curricula, interdisciplinary research and engagement with industry and the wider community.
Macquarie's approach has paid off. Eighty-five per cent of its research activity is rated through the ‘Excellence in Research for Australia’ initiative at world standard or higher, and it has received a rating of 5 stars across all categories measured by QS. 90% of its graduates under the age of 25 are employed within 6 months of completing their studies. More importantly, the University has helped to form generations of individuals who are audacious and responsible leaders in their field and active members of their communities.
