Introduction to Psychology was about to go live online as a synchronous massive online course.
“The territory is so new here,” Mr. Gosling, a tenured professor, said the next morning. “Are we essentially televising a class or are we trying to make a kind of educational TV show?” The answer, he said, is probably somewhere in between, following a trend toward online courses intended to extend the reach of higher education beyond a university’s campus.
As the class began, about 800 U.T-Austin students — not including roughly two dozen who had been chosen to be the studio audience — participated remotely, using computers or mobile devices. Students from outside U.T.-Austin were also able to sign up for the course. (The University of Texas at Austin is a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune.) The structure of the course invites a comparison to the massive open online courses, known as MOOCs, which are offered free — though typically not for credit — to anyone with an Internet connection. U.T.-Austin will launch its first four MOOCs this semester.
But to take the synchronous class, which is offered for credit, students not enrolled at the university must pay $550 and block off their Tuesday and Thursday evenings to participate in real time.Mr. Gosling and Mr. Pennebaker, who have taught together for years, said their course had evolved over time. “We’ve always been tinkering, experimenting, trying new things, trying to push the class forward,” Mr. Gosling said.
During class, students view presentations and move into online chat rooms to discuss the material. The professors can view and respond to the discussions and other questions. Students are graded by online quizzes given before each class.
Marla Gilliland, a senior project manager at the university who oversees the production of the psychology course and a similar class in the government department, said there were up to 30 staff members on call to answer students’ questions and otherwise assist with the first class. The course was created to accommodate up to 10,000 students. Fewer than 30 students from outside the university signed up for this first offering, far below the number expected.
“There have been so many moving parts to this,” Mr. Pennebaker said. “One part that was not moving was marketing.”
With additional promotion, the course could reach a wider audience, he said.
The professors also pointed out that this course, like other efforts to expand access to college courses, is still in an experimental stage.
“It’s clear that education is going in that direction, broadly speaking,” Mr. Gosling said. “It’s going to take a while before they figure out quite how to do that.”
“We’ll take some wrong steps, of course,” he said, “but we want to find out what works and what doesn’t.”
rhamilton@texastribune.org