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February 22 Council Coverage

At the February 22 University Council meeting, Online Learning Initiatives at Penn were discussed. Provost Vincent Price introduced the topic, noting that there have been tremendous strides since the 2012 launch of Coursera; since then all 12 schools at Penn have gotten involved; Penn added the edX platform in 2015. All of this is transforming teaching on campus as well as online.

Vice Provost for Education Beth Winkelstein then gave an overview of Online Learning Initiatives at Penn (OLI) starting with the launch of MOOCs on Coursera in 2012 with 10 courses to the current 117 offerings from Penn, involving some 130 Penn faculty and more than 5.8 million enrollments. She described the current landscape where there are partnerships between OLI, the Center for Learning Analytics, the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Library. The Learning with MOOCs Conference: Being and Learning in a Digital Age was held at Penn last fall and is available online at www.learningwithmoocs2016.org

New programs are being created such as the Master of Health Care Innovation (PSOM with Wharton, Law, Nursing and LDI) and Robotics MicroMasters (SEAS) as well as a new “How to Apply to College,” just launched by Undergraduate Admissions. For more about Penn’s initiatives see www.onlinelearning.upenn.edu

Ryan Baker from Penn’s Center for Learning Analytics — which was established last fall — described his attempt to get a scientific understanding of how to enhance the educational practices through the use of state-of-the-art methods in learning analytics, educational data mining and quantitative field observation.

SEAS Dean Vijay Kumar discussed how online learning can complement classroom teaching or synchronous learning.

Susan Meyer from SAS discussed leveraging MOOC teaching in on-campus classes that become more interactive.

The Open Forum portion of the meeting began with a graduate student’s comments about mental health and wait times for appointments at Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS); he asked what updates there are from the Task Force that was reconvened last year. The second speaker was a student from Fossil Free Penn who wanted a public discussion based on logic and facts about Penn’s endowment and climate change. The next student spoke about how Penn should be training thinkers who will speak out rather than issuing partisan statements concerning the Executive Order. Then, a representative of GAPSA’s IDEAL (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access and Leadership) Committee spoke about wanting a central diversity office. A FGLI student wants application and SAT fee waivers.

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