On October 13, 2015, a student in Portugal clicked a button to purchase
university credit for an edX MOOC in Astronomy that he just completed. Seven
minutes later he was provided with an official transcript from Arizona State
University (ASU). The primary focus of this presentation will be to share the
lessons learned while executing the shift from “traditional” MOOCs (if there is
such a thing), to university level, for-credit MOOCs on the edX platform. This shift
has occurred as part of a partnership between edX and ASU called the Global
Freshman Academy (GFA). Developing this new and largely unexplored model
has created many opportunities and challenges, some foreseen and some not.
Many valuable lessons were learned at each stage of the design, development,
launch, delivery, and revision stage for each course. We will share lessons from
the perspectives of the diverse teams that were involved. Focus areas include
open educational resources, publisher content, platform capabilities, identity
verification and proctoring, changes in marketing and audience, issues of scale,
media production, and content creation. Audience members can expect to gain
insight and practice recommendations on the design, development, and delivery
of MOOCs for credit based on our shared lessons learned.
