February 22, 2013
Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU)
The University of Tokyo (Todai) has signed an agreement to deliver courses through online education provider Coursera.
Coursera is a rapidly-growing Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) provider that offers free online courses and certificates upon completion of the courses. Other users of this leading provider include world-class universities such as Columbia, Princeton and Stanford.
Working with Coursera allows the university to engage with a much broader audience. It also has potential benefits for the university. In the first such effort by a Japanese university, Todai will perform an experiment through the Coursera platform as a means of reaching a broad, international audience.
From autumn 2013, two English-language courses by Todai faculty members will reach many tens of thousands of users around the globe through Coursera. Professor Kiichi Fujiwara (Graduate Schools of Law and Politics and Director of the Northeast Asian Security Unit at the Policy Alternatives Research Institute) will teach “Conditions of War and Peace.” Professor Hitoshi Murayama (Director of the Kavli Institute for the Mathematics and Physics of the Universe) will teach “From the Big Bang to Dark Energy.” In addition to studying the learning process and outcomes of the participants, this will enable the university to perform the experiment and evaluate the performance of the “flipped classroom,” which combines online lectures with face-to-face learning.
Read more ( Press release from The University of Tokyo ) [PDF 33KB] >>>
Coursera press release:
http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=988276
Coursera Todai page:
https://www.coursera.org/todai