UI is undecided about its online course strategy - Christine Des Garennes, News-Gazette

The Urbana campus announced in mid-July of last year it was one of 12 universities at the time to sign agreements with Coursera. Since then, more universities have partnered with the company. The private for-profit company was founded in fall 2011 by two Stanford University professors and has since received tens of millions of dollars in funding from venture capitalists. In this new online world, administrators faced questions such as, if a faculty member teaches a MOOC through Coursera, is it considered part of his or her normal teaching load? A campus committee, dubbed the MOOC Strategic Advisory Committee, was established and its members have been discussing the myriad directions they can take. MOOCs, as people know them today, have only been around for about two years, said online education expert Ray Schroeder from the UI's Springfield campus. "People tend to look at MOOCs as they are today. They don't realize it's a moving target," he said. http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2013-09-01/ui-undecided-about-its-online-course-strategy.html