Vanderbilt makes its first institution-wide foray into digital course offerings—both for credit and not for credit—in 2013.
The university announced the first part of this move in September, revealing that five free, not-for-credit courses will be offered by leading Vanderbilt faculty members between February and July in partnership with digital learning consortium Coursera. More than 85,000 people had already enrolled in courses at press time.
Then in November came the news that Vanderbilt, along with nine other leading U.S. universities, will begin offering selected courses online for credit in fall 2013. The new partnership, called Semester Online, is the first of its kind to offer undergraduate students the opportunity to take rigorous online courses for credit from such a consortium.
Semester Online courses will be delivered through a virtual classroom environment and interactive platform developed by 2U (formerly known as 2tor), providing students unique course offerings from prestigious institutions nationwide—courses to which they otherwise would not have access. Students will pay tuition for these courses.
“[These partnerships] will allow Vanderbilt to move forward with our digital learning strategy while leveraging the university’s existing strengths—our unique on-campus experience, our culture that blends extraordinary teaching with world-class research, and our breadth of disciplines and collaboration—to broaden our path and chart powerful new ways to engage Vanderbilt students and learners worldwide,” says Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos.
Learn more about Vanderbilt’s digital learning initiative.
See Professor Douglas Schmidt talk about his Coursera software course: