Dive Brief:
- Several prestigious universities — including Duke University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — are developing plans for curriculums that will offer more flexibility for students to choose when and where they take courses.
- MIT is considering plans to break down courses into small modules that can be rearranged for personalized learning, and to combine in-classroom and distance learning to allow students to spend as little as two years on campus, Inside Higher Ed reports.
- Georgia Tech is considering ideas that would allow graduates to return for short periods of learning about new concepts that they could apply to years-old degrees.
Dive Insight:
Many of the universities at the forefront of the flexible curriculum movement were also pioneers in the massive open online courses movement, as Inside Higher Ed notes. The universities are also careful to point out that their ideas are preliminary, though they are encouraging experimentation by their faculty on how best to deliver courses. Harvard has 47 projects that could be considered course delivery experimentation, including MOOCs, and Duke is experimenting with Coursera. Harvard and Duke are also both hesitant about fully online education.