Some of the country’s premier universities are partnering to form an innovative online classroom program.
A student at Duke or Wake Forest or UNC-Chapel Hill has a dizzying array of classes to choose from on campus. But some of those classes might not be exactly what they want or need, or the classes may not be offered when they need them. A new partnership called Semester Online aims to change that. The idea is to teach certain classes online, creating an even larger pool of courses for students not only at Duke, Carolina, and Wake, but also at Northwestern, Vanderbilt, and a dozen other elite universities. Duke Provost Peter Lang says it will be a great opportunity for students.
Peter Lang: "It’ll enrich their curriculum because we’ll have access to very high-quality, extremely well-taught courses in subject matters that we can’t always teach or perhaps we can’t teach at all."
The for-credit classes will be small and students will meet online as they would in a classroom – at the same time, with a real, live faculty members allowing for exchanges of ideas. The Semester Online classes will start in the fall of 2013.