Following the instant popularity of the Big History MOOC programme by Australia’s Macquarie University on the online learning platform Coursera, the university is now offering a Big History International Student Undergraduate Scholarship.
The scholarship can be availed by students of classes XI and XII and independent learners. The Big History course is Macquarie University’s first ever MOOC programme and within three months, more than 11,000 students from across 100 countries have enrolled for it. Indian students in this course constitute 5.9 per cent of the total number of enrolled students and fare third in line after the U.S. and China.
The scholarship is available only to international students who have completed the Big History Connecting Knowledge MOOC programme through Coursera and who have applied for any undergraduate course at the Macquarie University. Students have to verify the completion of the course by obtaining a certificate and registering their interest in the Macquarie University Big History International Student Undergraduate Scholarship at http://mq.edu.au/intl/bighistory. This is available to all international students who apply for any undergraduate course at Macquarie University.
The scholarships will cover full tuition fee which can extend up to 50,000 AUD per year for an undergraduate degree lasting for three-four years. The first scholarship will be awarded in July. The application deadline is June 30 and all applications sent after that will be considered for the 2017 scholarship.
The Big History Connecting Knowledge is a six-week introductory course that teaches students to think critically and change the way one understands the world. It provides students a new framework to evaluate and approach problems in fundamentally new ways. It brings together insights and evidence from several disciplines into a single, understandable story. Supported by Bill Gates, the course is an epic trans-disciplinary journey through 13.8 billion years starting at the Big Bang and travelling through time all the way into the future.
