Dive Brief:
- The University of Oklahoma is taking the online courses that it offers to students for credit and making them available as massive open online courses via its Janux learning platform.
- The university has offered no-credit MOOCs through Janux in computer science, history, political science, chemistry, education, and earth and energy — and a course on the chemistry of beer is the most popular so far, Campus Technology reports.
- Janux is owned and developed by NextThought, a Norman, OK-based company that launched in 2011.
Dive Insight:
The beer chemistry course has attracted 9,000 students as a MOOC. So far, Janux has had nearly 20,000 users from 90 countries in six months, with 20 courses offered for credit for the university’s students and sans-credit for the public. The course content and student data is hosted by the university’s central information technology department servers, and content curation is handled by the school’s Center for Teaching Excellence, with faculty members deciding what to offer on the platform. Janux also has an iPad app, which now lets students access course lectures, reading materials, videos, and practice questions. The plan is for the mobile app to allow users to add their own notes, submit assignments, and join discussions.