CU-Boulder seeking proposals for new MOOCs

The Office of the Provost at CU-Boulder is calling for proposals for a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to be run on the Coursera platform in fall 2014.

Last fall, the University of Colorado Boulder fielded four MOOCs on the Coursera platform. The four courses included two graduate courses from Engineering (“Introduction to Power Electronics” by Bob Erickson and “Linear and Integer Programming” by Sriram Sankaranarayana and Shalom Ruben), one English course (“Comic Books and Graphic Novels” by William Kuskin), and one Physics course (“Physics 1 for Physical Science Majors” by Michael Dubson). The four courses ran from between seven and 12 weeks and served 125,000 students.

We seek proposals to add one additional MOOC to the Boulder portfolio in the fall of 2014. Proposals are welcome from current CU-Boulder faculty with tenure, instructors, or faculty/graduate student teams.

Complete proposals should be submitted electronically by the chair or director of the sponsoring unit to William Kuskin (William.Kuskin@Colorado.edu) by April 11.

Applications materials should include

• 1-page Rationale, including who will be involved, whether the course has been taught online before, what funding sources are available to support the project, and what additional funding will be needed, as well as any planned assessment projects.
• 1-page Course Description, including a time frame for prep and delivery.
• 1-page Chair/Director’s letter of support.

The Technology and Distance Group will evaluate the proposals and forward recommendations to Provost Moore and Vice Provost Grant. The Technology and Distance Group includes William Kuskin, Chair/English; Members: Christopher Braider, Director of CMCI; Noah Finkelstein, Director, Center for STEM Learning; Geoffrey Rubinstein, Director of Online and Independent Learning, Continuing Education; Mary Ann Shea, Director of Faculty Teaching Excellence Program; Diane Sieber, Associate Dean For Education, College of Engineering and Applied Science; Caroline Sinkinson, Assistant Professor, University Libraries; Marin Stanek, Director of Academic & Campus Technology Communications & Support/OIT; Members at large: Jeff Cox, AVC Faculty Affairs; Michael Lightner, Chair, Department of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering.

For more information or to discuss ideas for projects, please contact William Kuskin, William.Kuskin@Colorado.edu.