Dive Brief:
- The University of California at Irvine’s latest massive open online course offering will be based on the FX vampire show The Strain.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the course, offered via Instructure, will explore parasites, cyber attacks, and disease dynamics over its four-week run.
- One of the course lecturers expects the show to provide an entry into math and science for people who may not have been interested otherwise, according to the article.
Dive Insight:
UC-Irvine is no stranger to MOOCs that use TV shows as an entrypoint to broader educational topics, having previously announced an offering based on AMC's The Walking Dead in 2013. That was a multidisciplinary course that crossed public health, social science, physics, and math, and it ultimately drew more than 65,000 students. That, too, was offered via the Instructure platform. The latest MOOC brings together faculty focused on molecular biology and biochemstry, information and computer science, and physical science.