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The University of Baltimore (UB) is working with Pulitzer-prize winning historian Taylor Branch and the USMCAI to offer the course “Citizenship and Freedom: The Civil Rights Era” in an innovative, online, for-credit format. Unlike MOOCs, this course is based on a seminar format that promises synchronous interactivity. Also unlike MOOCs, this course features a blend of lecture, panels, and real-time Q&A with the virtual audience.

In 2013, the USM entered into an agreement with Ithaka S+R (with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) to explore the viability of repurposing MOOCs to be used as part of regular undergraduate programs at degree granting institutions. Given the momentum already established by the USM’s Maryland Course Redesign Initiative, faculty interest in MOOCs was robust. We ended up with 22 trials –many more than the 5-7 originally projected. So, as the highly controversial MOOC model continues to generate much national press –both positive and, more recently, negative– our side-by-side experimental MOOC-augmented courses are currently being tested (2013-14).

Ithaka S+R collaborated with the �鶹��ý to test the use of interactive online learning platforms in seventeen courses across seven universities. Fourteen of these tests used Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on the Coursera platform, almost all embedded in hybrid course formats, and three used courses from the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University (OLI).