New course format attracts thousands of participants

24,000 students at one lecture? Sounds like overcrowded lecture halls, noise, and the worlds longest toilet queue. Obviously, these problems do not exist when the teaching activities take place online.

At the beginning of September, CBS launched a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Coursera, an online portal with thousands of active users and more than 24,000 registrations for the first CBS course.

Everybody is welcome to register, so the course participants are not typical CBS students. They come from all over the world and have very different backgrounds. It may sound like it would have to be a relatively simple course with a number of videos and very limited student participation, but the people behind the course think that CBS in fact is revitalising the course format.

- MOOCs often have a linear approach to learning, where students see a lecture video, answer a multiple choice test, and then get a diploma. We have attempted to make a course, which is closer to the way CBS thinks about learning, says Thomas Rousing, Research Assistant at CBS Learning Technologies and Project Manager of CBS' first MOOC.

New businesses
MOOCs gathered momentum in 2012 with Coursera. With 100 registered universities, Coursera offers more than 400 courses. CBS' somewhat different approach means that the course is focused on group work and the end objective is that the participants establish new businesses.

During the course's first week, the participants raised USD 13,137 for Young Enterprise Denmark by preparing and presenting business ideas through the portal Betternow.org, to which the portal users donated money. At the end of the course, the three best business ideas will receive the donated money, which can be used to continue the business.

- If our course leads to just a handful of successful businesses, we have reached the target, says Kai Hockerts, Professor at the Department of Intercultural Communication and Management and main lecturer of the course.

Not just a course
Annemette Kjærgaard, Vice Dean for Academic Development and Learning Technologies, thinks that CBS will find it advantageous to host MOOCs.

- These are not just courses on a new platform. We also see it as an opportunity to attract attention to CBS. This is an investment in an area, which is developing rapidly. The aim is to benefit from the investment in other areas, for instance new collaborations and partnerships, attraction of foreign researchers and students and a general branding of CBS, says Annemette Kjærgaard.