University of Texas Ready to Offer Nine Massive Open Online Courses

The University of Texas has announced plans to offer nine massive open enrollment, online courses during the 2013-14 academic year:

The courses will be deployed on the edX platform. EdX is an online nonprofit learning initiative founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in May 2012. In October the University of Texas System became the fourth partner in the edX consortium of leading colleges, universities and university systems. Other members include Harvard, MIT, the University of California at Berkeley, Wellesley College and Georgetown University.

The University of Texas at Austin plans to deploy the first four MOOCs in fall 2013, followed by an additional five in spring 2014. Faculty and course development teams will use state-of-the-art approaches to build the content, assessments and technology for each course.

“Our faculty is enthusiastic about this frontier, and I’m proud that The University of Texas is in the vanguard of blended and online learning,” said university President Bill Powers. “Innovations like this make it an exciting time to be in higher education.”

These courses, which will be designed and taught by award-winning faculty members, are as follows:

The planned courses are:

Fall 2013 launch

• Ideas of the Twentieth Century — Daniel Bonevac, College of Liberal Arts; Roy Flukinger, Harry Huntt Ransom Humanities Research Center
• Introduction to Globalization — John Hoberman, College of Liberal Arts
• Bench to Bedside: Introduction to Drug Development and the Commercialization Process — Janet Walkow, College of Pharmacy; Donna Kidwell, IC2 Institute; Alan Watts, College of Pharmacy
• Energy Technology & Policy — Michael Webber, Cockrell School of Engineering

Spring 2014 launch

• Jazz Appreciation — Jeffrey Hellmer, College of Fine Arts
• Foundations of Data Analysis — Catherine Stacy and Michael Mahometa, College of Natural Sciences
• Mathematics and Effective Thinking — Michael Starbird, College of Natural Sciences
• Introduction to Embedded Systems — Jonathan Valvano and Ramesh Yerraballi, Cockrell School of Engineering
• Linear Algebra: Theory and Computation — Robert van de Geijn and Margaret Myers, College of Natural Sciences

I’m looking forward to this, and plan on taking Dr. Bonevac’s course on Ideas of the Twentieth Century. I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Bonevac back in 2008 when he debated Dr. James Galbraith at the University of Texas’ Lecture Series billed as a “Liberal vs. Conservative: Debate to the Death”).

The debate, which was held before a packed house of mostly 19-20 year old kids on the UT campus, was between:

• Dr. James K Galbraith, a distinguished and world-renowned Economics professor and — even in an academic environment run over by Liberals, considered to be one of the most Liberal.
• Dr. Daniel Bonevac, a Professor of Philosophy and a core faculty member of the Program in Western Civilization and American Institutions at UT. Considered to be one of the most Conservative professors on campus. Meaning he might be the only one.

The Energy Technology and Policy course sounds interesting as well. If I have time, I might try to take part in that one as well.