Mike Schatz teaches Matter & Interactions at Georgia Tech. He has developed
a Coursera MOOC on mechanics which started May 20:
www.coursera.org/course/phys1. It is unusual for a MOOC in having a strong
experimental component and a strong computational modeling component.
Students use their smartphones to capture video of motion, extract
coordinates and times using Tracker (www.cabrillo.edu/~dbrown/tracker/),
and model the motion in 3D using VPython (vpython.org). The slogan for the
course is "Your world is your lab." Student experimental and computational
work is evaluated by other students.
The textbook is the first 11 chapters of Matter & Interactions, whose
publisher, John Wiley & Sons, has partnered with Coursera and a company
named Chegg to produce an ebook version that is freely available to
students in the MOOC during the course. Students have an option to buy
permanent access to the ebook.
Judging from the number of VPython downloads, there are about 5000 students
actively engaged with the course. I volunteered to help with VPython
installation issues, which have almost entirely fallen into two categories:
misunderstanding the installation instructions, or a need to update the
graphics driver (to support the OpenGL 3D graphics library used by VPython).
I personally am happy to see all the ferment in the world of MOOCs. Trying
new things is a Good Thing, even if the eventual value of MOOCs remains to
be established. In this context, Mike has done something particularly
interesting and innovative.