MOOCs

U Michigan Expands to edX with 4 Courses

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 03/08/16

The University of Michigan, a founding partner of MOOC company Coursera, has followed through on a fall 2015 commitment to deliver massive open, online courses on edX as well. The university's Office of Digital Education & Innovation will launch the first of four programs on the edX platform starting in April.

The courses to be launched this spring and summer on "MichiganX" are: Finance for Everyone: Smart Tools for Decision-Making, which begins on April 5; Data Science Ethics, which starts May 1; and Social Work: Meeting the Challenges of a New Era and Practical Learning Analytics, both of which launch in July.

The finance course could turn out to be the best attended. Gautam Kaul, the faculty member creating that course, also produced "Introduction to Finance" for Coursera, a class that ranks as the fourth most popular MOOC of all time by Online Course Report.

The ethics course is being led by H.V. Jagadish, a professor known for his work related to the ethical use of data. Jagadish received a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant for a project that researched the use of big data to achieve social good.

The social work program comes out of the university's School of Social Work and is intended to help participants explore a career in that segment, particularly those considering pursuit of a master's degree in social work.

The analytics course will explore "the landscape of learning analytics in higher ed."

People who complete any of the courses successfully may also pursue a $49 "verified certificate."

Associate Vice Provost James DeVaney, in a prepared statement, said the expansion reflected the institution's "aspirations to make the resources of the university available to the broadest possible range of global learners." He added that the overall goal is to transform at least 200 courses by 2017.