Wednesday, September 4, 2013
UC Irvine Ventures Into MOOCs With Zombie Lectures
How much can you learn from a TV series around a zombie apocalypse? A new, massive open online course (MOOC) from the University of California, Irvine, hopes to teach students all kinds of concepts from social science, public health, mathematics and physics--all based on material from AMC's television show, "The Walking Dead". According to UC Irvine, along with AMC and online course provider Instructure, they are launching a massive open online course which uses pop culture to talk about such topics as "survival, leadership and adapting to situations that are perilous and uncertain".
Massive open online courses are a new effort by universities to reach out to the general public, allowing them to take actual university classes online--with tests and grading--across a wide range of disciplines. Those classes have tended to be more of the traditional sort, with many technical, business, and engineering courses available. The new course from UC Irvine is unusual in it has taken a strong, pop culture angle to online education. The course is free to anyone who wants to register.
AMC, UC Irvine, and Instructure said the free course runs from Monday, October 14th (the day after the season premiere of season 4 of AMC's The walking Dead) until December 2nd.