Share Paper: Teaching Creative Writing to the World: Showcasing the Liberal Arts in a MOOC Landscape of Business and Tech

  1. Jeffrey Goetz, Wesleyan University, United States
  2. Paula Blue, Wesleyan University, United States
  3. Dan Mercier, Wesleyan University, United States
Monday, November 14 11:35-11:55 AM Whitney

Abstract: In partnership with Coursera, over 1.6 million students have enrolled in 21 Wesleyan MOOCs across a diverse curriculum including film, classics, math, economics, and psychology. Most recently, we have launched a Specialization (or sequence of courses) for Creative Writing, a topic that did not exist in the MOOC world previously. Drawing on our reputation for excellence and annual Writer’s Conference, we created a unique design philosophy to bring this intensely personal – and intensely subjective – discipline to a wide audience. In this presentation, we discuss inception, development, launch, and progression of our Specialization, including our metrics for success. We ...