Pardee School’s first MOOC attracts 10,750+ students from 150+ countries
“War for the Greater Middle East,” the first MOOC – massive open online course – offered by a professor at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies has indeed attracted a massive number of students: Over 10,750 registered students from more than 150 different countries and territories around the world.
Launched on September 24, 2014 and taught by Pardee School professor emeritus Andrew Bacevich the course hopes to make students rethink the history of the 20th century so as to be better prepared for the 21st. Speaking to the Daily Free Press, Prof. Bacevich said ““I want them [students] to see the relationship between a whole series of U.S. military actions that have occurred over the past 30-plus years in places ranging from Libya all the way to Pakistan.”
The Daily Free Press story also cited Prof. Adil Najam, the Dean of the Pardee School of Global Studies, saying: “It is a mega class with a mega topic,” he said. “And that is to look at what is happening in the Middle East, not through the lens of one war or one campaign or one person or one issue, but as this larger set of conflicts that we in the U.S. and really the whole world are now in the center of.”
Mark Kukis, the teaching fellow for the course and a doctoral candidate in history at Boston Univeristy, confirmed that while the largest number of students (more than 40%) are from the United States, the majority of the students taking the MOOC come from the rest of the world, including a very large number from what constitutes the ‘Greater Middle East.’