Teaching History in a Massive, Open, Online Environment

My remarks will focus on the overall redesign of my semester-long, University of Pennsylvania, History of the American South course into a 10 week massive open online course offered on the Coursera platform.  I will talk about the highly thematic approach I adopted to the series of 20 lectures that make up the course and my attempt to engage a more global conversation about this regional history and the problems of slavery, capitalism and democracy it necessarily poses. 

In the process I will address both the intellectual decision-making and the practical considerations involved in offering such a course and reflect on what it is possible to accomplish.  People routinely ask whether I liked doing “it,” and if I think “it” was successful.  Defining what “it” is – a course but not the brick and mortar for credit version -  has proven the most challenging part of the whole experience.  Reflecting on that might help to shed some light on the whole controversial subject of MOOCs and their meaning for the discipline of history and the history profession.