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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Atlanta, GA | Posted: February 5, 2013
Last weekend, Georgia Tech acted to suspend one of its free online courses, citing technical and quality issues. Administrators say the MOOC, or massively open online course, will be evaluated and possibly reopened at a future date.
The course, “Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application,” was offered through Coursera, one of the emerging distance education organizations that partners with universities to deliver free, non-credit academic courses on a global scale. More than 40,000 individuals registered for the course, which opened January 28. A few days later, Georgia Tech requested Coursera suspend the class pending further review.
“We apologize to those students who have been inconvenienced by this decision, but we are resolute in providing an academic standard of quality that is consistent with Georgia Tech’s reputation,” Professional Education Dean Nelson Baker said. “This is true regardless of whether the student is paying tuition to receive classroom instruction in Atlanta or freely participating in one of our MOOCs anywhere one can access the Internet.”
“These are today’s grand experiments in higher education,” he continued. “With any experiment, sometimes one has to press pause and reset, which is what we are doing. Leaders take risks to try new things, and we are leading.”
In signing an agreement with Coursera last July, Georgia Tech was one of the first universities in the nation to offer web-based courses online and create new opportunities for hands-on learning. To date, Tech has successfully launched four courses through Coursera, and another seven — on topics such as music, mathematics and engineering — are open for enrollment. Other courses are in early stages of development. Baker noted the process of learning how to deliver education to the world has been just as instructional for the providers.
“Georgia Tech has more than 30 years of experience in online education, yet the nature and scale of MOOCs require a different approach to course and instructional design. A feature of the MOOC experience is the ability to continually engage in quality improvement, and the Institute is exploring how to improve that experience. When the course meets our expectations, it will be reopened,” he said.
“Ultimately, this was Georgia Tech’s decision to suspend the course. We will review our policies and procedures and update them to reflect lessons learned from this experience.”
