Whenever CU professor Robert Mazzeo offers âExercise Physiology,â an upper-level undergraduate course popular with aspiring doctors, it fills quickly. So does the waiting list. He and a colleague each teach the class once a year to a combined total of about 230 students.
In June, Mazzeo, a member of the integrative physiology faculty and an avid tennis player, introduced an online version of the course called âThe Science of Exerciseâ that also has proven popular â on a vastly greater scale and far beyond Boulder.
By early November, more than 35,000 people worldwide had at least sampled the course, a MOOC, or massive open online course. Nearly 800 were on track to finish it, many for fun and at no cost, others for a certificate of completion and a $49 fee. A new cohort of students enrolls every two weeks. There is no cap on enrollment.
âBased on the number of new students joining each week, âScience of Exerciseâ is on track to be the most popular course in the history of CU,â said Cory Pavicich (Engl, Humâ04) of CUâs Office of Strategic Initiatives, which helps faculty design MOOCs.
MOOCs emerged about a decade ago. The 2012 debut of delivery platforms with ties to Stanford, Harvard and MIT led to a sustained burst of attention and a New York Times headline dubbing it âThe Year of the MOOC.â The medium was hailed as a way to offer online learning to mass audiences at minimal or no cost, amid intensifying concerns about the high cost of traditional campus-based higher education.
The hype has died down, but MOOCs have shown theyâre here to stay and that they can coexist with campus-based instruction while drawing huge numbers of additional off-campus learners. Coursera, one of the most prominent MOOC platforms, edX and Udacity now offer thousands of courses, commonly developed by professors at established universities, including CU Boulder.
After a modest start in MOOC development in 2013, when CU introduced its first four courses, including âIntroduction to Power Electronicsâ and âComic Books and Graphic Novels,â the university is rapidly growing its slate. As of November, nearly 25 MOOCs developed at CU Boulder were available on Coursera, the universityâs main platform partner. By 2020, the electrical engineering department alone expects to add at least 50 more.
âMOOCs were once branded the death-knell of the university and then they were proclaimed dead, but, in reality, they remain a fascinating field of play,â said English professor William Kuskin, who as vice provost and associate vice chancellor for strategic initiatives oversees MOOC development. âItâs an arena that uniquely merges teaching and research in ways capable of reaching the entire globe.â
The hype has died down, but MOOCs are here to stay.
MOOCs are just one form of online education, and not the only one offered by CU Boulder. The School of Continuing Education offers a variety of paid online courses open to the public, for example, and the campus has eight fully online graduate degree programs, mostly in engineering. But MOOCs are proliferating fastest, largely because production requires only one professor and a small team, and most of the faculty work is up front rather than continuous.
Besides âScience of Exercise,â CU Boulder MOOCs include âKinematics: Describing the Motions of Spacecraft,â âGraphic Design,â âBusiness Analytics for Decision Makingâ and âThe Dynamics of Group Communication.â Others scheduled for debut are âSocial and Emotional Learning and the Teacher,â âRoots and Shoots,â a collaboration with the Jane Goodall Institute, and âActive Optical Devices.â
âThe mission of a university should be to provide educational opportunities to students and reach as many as possible,â said Juliet Gopinath, the electrical engineering professor who developed the optical devices MOOC. âThe online forum allows us to reach non-traditional students and provide opportunities to those for whom it might be otherwise impossible. Personally, I also hope that it helps underrepresented groups as well as those in Third-World countries who struggle to find the time and opportunity to receive an education.â
As the name MOOC suggests, a MOOC ("massive open") is easy to join. Anyone with an internet connection can participate by visiting a provider website, such as coursera.org, registering, picking a course and clicking the first lesson. Learners can watch instructional videos and consume other course materials (readings, quizzes, projects) for free. To be evaluated and eligible for a certificate of completion, students pay a fee, typically less than $100 on Coursera.
Two years ago, Mazzeo hadnât even heard of MOOCs. When he did, from Russell Moore, the university provost, Mazzeo seized on the potential for propagating the core message of his teaching and research â that âexercise is medicineâ â at an exponentially greater rate than possible on campus.
All this means the campus and MOOC versions of Mazzeoâs course complement rather than compete with each other.
Working with a CU team of learning design experts, Mazzeo condensed and simplified the lectures from his semester-long campus course, shot a series of videos and developed new quizzes that could be scored by software or other students in the course. Within months, thousands of people around the world were enrolling in âScience of Exercise.â
âIâm reaching populations I never thought Iâd reach in my career,â said Mazzeo, who marvels over studentsâ locations, which he surveys on an electronic dashboard on his office computer: Botswana, Qatar, Algeria, Nepal, Iraq, India and scores of others. At least two-thirds of all people enrolled in CU Boulderâs MOOCs live outside the U.S., according to Pavicich.
All this means the campus and MOOC versions of Mazzeoâs course complement rather than compete with each other.
âThese are truly new students for the University of Colorado Boulder,â Pavicich said.
Mazzeoâs MOOC covers the same basic concepts as his in-the-flesh course, âExercise Physiology.â But itâs not the same course, and isnât intended to be.
The MOOC, which consists of four modules that can be completed at the studentâs pace within a 180-day period, is shorter and less technical, for example. It involves fewer and less-detailed tests. And successful completion of the MOOC doesnât confer CU academic credit.
Kuskinâs group believes MOOCs serve the universityâs fundamental mission and key interests in several ways.
They fulfill the broad mandate of providing public education, and they amplify CUâs renown. At least one CU department has reported that its MOOCs have helped attract full-time, degree-seeking students to campus.
Teaching through new media also prompts professors to reevaluate how and what students ought to learn. This can lead them to modify and improve traditional classroom courses.
And MOOCs are a source of revenue, modestly so far for CU, but with potential for significant growth.
Many universities have raced ahead in online education, among them Arizona State and the University of Florida, which bring in tens of millions of dollars through their programs, including online degree programs. The University of California Berkeley offers an online masterâs program in public health, and Georgia Tech offers online masterâs programs in computer science and analytics. MIT offers a pair of online âMicroMastersâ credentials that can lead to admission to an accelerated on-campus masterâs degree.
In time, CU Boulder expects to increase its share of paid online certificates and degree programs, according to Pavicich. MOOCs offer a foundation for that effort while immediately serving a greater number and variety of learners than the university ever has, he said â both newcomers to higher education and people who simply want more of it.
âWe are past the point where you can assume youâre done learning when youâre 22 or 23,â Pavicich said. âYou should expect to learn throughout your life.â
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Illustration by Harry Campbell
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