Wharton’s Strong Push for Online Learning
Since it began offering massive open online courses (MOOCs) in 2012 (the first business school to do so), Wharton has been the first to offer a specialization on Coursera and has one of the highest MOOC enrollments of any business school worldwide. The school has awarded 54,000 verified certificates, including 32,000 verified certificates since April 2015, and has had more than 2.7 million people enrolled in courses. All of this means an additional $5 million in revenue for Wharton in 2015.
The result of such success is that Wharton is expanding its online offerings, planning to launch at least two dozen new courses in the next year on the EdX platform, including three small private online courses (SPOCs) on digital marketing, gamification, and advanced product design.
Wharton’s dean, Geoffrey Garrett, considers the initiative a way to further extend the school’s brand throughout the world, reaching users unable to attend classes on campus. MOOCs also change how faculty and students interact in the classroom. If the lectures are done online, faculty can spend class time leading discussions or experiential learning opportunities off campus.
University pioneers of MOOCs include Stanford, Harvard, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, CalTech, UC Berkeley, and the Indian Institute of Technology. For executives, MOOCs can be a viable alternative to non-degree executive education programs, offering flexible schedules through asynchronous learning they can do at any time, no matter where they are.
For more information on Wharton MOOCs on Coursera, visit them online.
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