Supporting Online Initiatives: From MOOCs to For-Credit Offerings

Abstract

When the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) revolution erupted in 2012 there was a vision of bringing the world of first-class research and exceptional teaching to the broadest possible audience. The University of Pennsylvania embraced MOOCs with the spirit of innovation and experimentation and is currently building on this initial foray to advance our leadership role into the online space by creating new for-cred it courses and degrees. This paper describes the administrative infrastructure that was put in place to support open online learning in its early days and explains how changing goals are bringing about reassessment of the administrative role of the online unit. This case study could inform other institutions as they explore using MOOCs towards a for-credit program by suggesting a method of incorporating a transformative technology into a traditional research and residential based teaching institution.