UW-LaCrosse started it, launching an online math course, “College Readiness.” with the help of a grant from the Gates Foundation. A lot of the energy around MOOCs has centered on advanced courses: machine learning, business analytics, and so on. The kind of thing that gets funders and nerds excited. But funders and nerds are already educated! If MOOCs are to provide the educational equity they promise, they’ve got to do it at the low end — giving kids access to a better math course than their understaffed, underresourced high school can provide. Is there a demand for basic, unflashy math instruction online? Seems like it: a thousand people have signed up, twice as many as UWLC expected, including an 83-year-old and an 11-year-old. Those are much smaller numbers than Coursera gets for its sexy machine learning course, but I’ll bet the gap in number of finishers will be much narrower; this course is an “I need to,” not an “It would be cool to.”
And now UW-Madison has gotten into the act, announcing yesterday that UW would be offering four courses with Coursera, two to start this fall.
Readers: would it be a good idea, a bad idea, or some combination of both, for me to propose to teach a number theory MOOC?