If you haven’t yet heard the term “MOOC,” you’ll want to start getting familiar with it. MOOCs — Massive Open Online Courses — have taken higher education by storm this year, so much that the New York Times declared 2012 “The Year of the MOOC.” As you may know, in October the UT System signed on as a partner with EdX, the MOOC platform that also includes MIT, Harvard, UC Berkeley, Wellesley, and Georgetown. You can learn more about MOOCs and their implications for higher education by reading “7 Things You Should Know About MOOCs” from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, or review this selection of resources from the EDUCAUSE Library.
But one of the best ways to understand what MOOCs might mean to higher education — and to you — is to actually sign up and take one of these free, high-quality courses yourself. And there’s no better time than the next few months, because the choices are rich, in the biomedical and health sciences and beyond. Here are a few to consider:
- Introduction to Genetics & Evolution, Mohamed Noor PhD (Duke University via Coursera), starts 1/4/2013, lasts 10 weeks [video intro]
- International Health Systems, Bernardo Ramirez MD MBA (University of Central Florida), starts 1/7/2013, lasts 16 weeks
- Computational Methods for Data Analysis, J. Nathan Kutz PhD (University of Washington), starts 1/7/2013, lasts 10 weeks
- Introduction to Openness in Education, David Wiley PhD (lumen), starts 1/7/2013, lasts 15 weeks
- Health for All Through Primary Care, Henry Perry MD PhD MPH (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health), starts 1/23/2013, lasts 5 weeks [video intro]
- An Introduction to the US Food System: Perspectives from Public Health, Robert S Lawrence MD & Keeve Nachman PhD MHS (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health), starts 1/23/2013, lasts 6 weeks [video intro]
- Nutrition for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, Katie Clark MPH RD CDE (University of California San Francisco), starts 1/28/2013, lasts 6 weeks [video intro]
- Contraception: Choices, Culture and Consequences, Jerusalem Makonnen RN MSN FNP (University of California San Francisco), starts 1/28/2013, lasts 5 weeks [video intro]
- The Social Context of Mental Health and Illness, Charmaine Williams PhD MSW (University of Toronto), starts 1/28/2013, lasts 6 weeks [video intro]
- Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application, Fatimah Wirth PhD (Georgia Tech), starts 1/28/2013, lasts 6 weeks [video intro]
- E-learning and Digital Cultures, Jeremy Knox with Siân Bayne PhD, Hamish Macleod PhD, Jen Ross PhD & Christine Sinclair PhD (University of Edinburgh), starts 1/28/2013, lasts 5 weeks [video intro]
- Health Informatics in the Cloud, Mark Braunstein MD (Georgia Tech), starts 1/28/2013, lasts 10 weeks [video intro]
- Principles of Public Health, Zuzana Bic DrPH MUDr (University of California Irvine), starts 1/28/2013, lasts 5 weeks [video intro]
- Clinical Problem Solving, Catherine R Lucey MD (University of California San Francisco), starts 2/11/2013, lasts 6 weeks [video intro]
- The Challenges of Global Poverty, Esther Duflo PhD & Abhijit Banerjee PhD (MIT), starts 2/12/2013, lasts 13 weeks [video intro]
- Human Health and Global Environmental Change, Aaron Bernstein MD MPH (Harvard), Spring 2013 (date yet to be announced)
For more, check out the catalogs and upcoming course listings for the Canvas Network, Coursera, and EdX, or check out the very helpful combined listing at Class Central or reviews & ratings at CourseTalk.
Image credit: “learn” by Mark Brannan CC-BY-NC-SA
