MOOC experts surprised by how they're evolving

Versión en español aquí

Mark Glaser of PBS Mediashift recently pulled together a panel of experts for an online chat about how massive open online courses (MOOCs) are affecting universities and professional education. Some exceprts from the fascinating 40-minute exchange are below.

Alves

Rosental Alves, director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas, has been running MOOCs on journalism topics since 2012.

One of the surprising things about these courses is how many non-journalists are taking them, Alves said.  There is a hunger for learning the journalistic skills of gathering, verifying and presenting information, he said.

(Many of my 2,000 fellow students were non-journalists when I took the center's course on data visualization offered by Alberto Cairo.)

CUNY aims to incubate new media

Stephen Shepard, dean of CUNY

 Journalism School: "We are

 researching ways to support quality

as the old financial order erodes." 

Second in a series on entrepreneurial journalism programs at universities and media organizations.

City University of New York's Entrepreneurial Journalism program aims to be an incubator of new media projects as well as training the next generation of digital journalists.

To that end the faculty research is aimed at helping entrepreneurs directly, as with its survey of 500 local businesses' the online presence and marketing needs; its students do apprenticeships at startups that need help solving a problem; and each student develops a capstone project that could be a business plan or new media prototype. 

In addition, the school hosts events where some of New York City's digital entrepreneurs can present their projects and get feedback. “We want to play a role in the community,” says Jeremy Caplan, director of education for the program. “We want to be a place where people will come and share their ideas.” 

At American U., media entrepreneurship includes NGOs

Jan Schaffer

First in a series on entrepreneurial journalism programs at universities and media organizations.

In the new world of media, traditional journalism organizations are just one more voice, and the MA in Media Entrepreneurship program at American University reflects that.

Jan Schaffer, who teaches the program's seminar on media entrepreneurship, believes that journalism schools should teach "information-gathering and truth-seeking skills to a broad array of future civic players.” That means new media could be non-governmental organizations and other nonprofits.