BBC helps produce First World War Moocs
By Chris Parr
Four UK universities are teaming up with the BBC to produce massive open online courses about the First World War
The universities taking part (see box below) will have access to rare video, audio and imagery from the BBC, some of which will not have been aired for decades. It is hoped that the process will allow the BBC to explore how it can work with British universities to enhance the quality of the UK’s online learning.
At a launch event at the BBC’s Old Broadcasting House in London on 23 July, FutureLearn chief executive, Simon Nelson, said that many Moocs had been “rightly criticised as just being a repackaging and redistribution of the traditional lecture format”, and that some universities were using the internet to “pump out videos”, rather than using their courses to tell a story. He said he hoped that working with the BBC would help institutions to be more creative.
The four WW1 FutureLearn Moocs:
- Aviation Comes of Age
University of Birmingham, from 20 October - Changing Faces of Heroism
University of Leeds, from 27 October - Paris 1919: A New World Order?
University of Glasgow, from 13 October - Trauma and Memory
The Open University, from 3 November
Source: Times Higher Education
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