Associate professor of Anthropology John Hawks, left, and Department of Geography chair Kris Olds.
Two faculty members from the College of Letters & Science are at the forefront of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's first steps into the world of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
UW-Madison announced on Wednesday that it will offer four pilot courses in partnership with the online learning company Coursera. Two of the courses are scheduled to begin this fall.
Associate Professor of Anthropology John Hawks and Professor of Geography Kris Olds will teach two of those first four courses.
Hawks, a paleoanthropologist, will teach Human Evolution: Past and Future, while Olds will teach Globalizing Higher Education and Research for the "Knowledge Economy," along with professor Susan L. Robertson from the University of Bristol in England. Olds and Robertson have collaborated on research in the past.
A MOOC is an online course aimed at large-scale participation and open access. They are a recent development in the area of distance education and build on earlier concepts for innovative course delivery. Courses use multimedia presentations, including video, and encourage learning through online interaction among students.