Dive Brief:
- Tennessee will provide an additional $1 million to a two-year pilot program designed to improve the online course offerings of University of Tennessee schools.
- Through the pilot program, which launched in May 2013, the university system has offered four online courses through Coursera and three through edX.
- The additional state funding will help the program reach out to more faculty members, who may be skeptical, and to apply lessons from the first year and test technology to improve student outcomes.
Dive Insight:
More than 4,800 students are expected to register for massive open online courses from the University of Tennessee system. Three edX courses are being designed now for testing, including a summer 2015 required course to help transition incoming freshman to the University of Tennessee's Knoxville campus. So far, the pilot has taught educators about the value of course redesign, of video lectures, and of matching the right courses to an online platform. Student feedback has been mixed, reported Nooga.com. Two of the MOOCs offered were entirely online; the other two were provided through a “flipped” classroom approach, where students view the lectures online and review the material in the classroom. One side benefit of the program has been the collaboration fostered between the university’s campuses.