Web Courses Woo Professors

Douglas Belkin & Melissa Korn:

Technology companies trying to reinvent higher education through online instruction are looking to win over the group with the most to lose from the effort: professors.

Coursera, one of the biggest providers of Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, plans to announce Thursday it will open its doors to professors at 10 major university systems to create their own online courses.

Until now, Coursera content has come almost exclusively from professors at the world's most prestigious institutions, making it vulnerable to charges that it was helping to create a system where elite professors would produce the content and eventually cost faculty at less selective schools their jobs.

The contracts broaden Coursera's audience, currently 3.68 million people, by giving it access to more than 1.25 million students enrolled in the combined university systems. Professors will be able to incorporate MOOCs into their campus-based classes, creating a blended model designed to free up time for more classroom discussions as students watch lectures on their own.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at June 3, 2013 2:27 AM
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