MOOCs

U Michigan Launches 3 Online Certificate Programs via edX

• By Michael Hart
• 05/03/16

The University of Michigan will launch three new online certificate programs that will be available on the edX MOOC platform.

The programs are in addition to four massive open online courses (MOOCs) that U Michigan's Office of Digital Education & Innovation (DEI) announced in October and launched on edX in April.

This marks the latest step in DEI's initiative to launch 100 MOOCs by December and 100 more in 2017.

Michigan also uses another MOOC platform, Coursera, to host its online education efforts. The school noted that a major appeal of the edX platform, however, is its open source nature. edX hosts online university-level courses in a wide range of disciplines to a worldwide student body, including some courses at no charge.

The three certificate programs, comprising 15 courses, are:

• User Experience Research XSeries;
• User Experience Design XSeries; and
• Corporate Financial Analysis XSeries.

The User Experience Research program is designed to help students develop research skills to explore the growing field of human-computer interaction. The User Experience Design program aims to teach the principles of design needed to create prototypes that demonstrate human-computer interaction. The Corporate Financial Analysis program will focus on the quantitative and analytical aspects of finance.

Michigan representatives said the goal of the DEI's XSeries courses is to engage students in flexible, outcome-based learning that will give them tools they need to analyze and use data.

"This marks another important step in Michigan's long history of innovation and experimentation in the academic space," said James Hilton, University of Michigan dean of libraries and vice provost for digital education and innovation.

"These sequences will allow us to deepen our engagement with lifelong and global learners while also helping us improve and differentiate our residential programs," added Hilton.