Emory and Coursera: Benefits beyond the numbers

By Kimber Williams. When Coursera first began partnering with top universities to bring MOOCs (massive open online courses) to a worldwide audience, the enrollment numbers created a shockwave. Suddenly, tens of thousands of students were signing up to take a single online class, recalls Kimbi Hagen, one of Emory's early pioneers in the free, not-for-credit online experiment. Now that Hagen, who is assistant professor in the department of behavioral sciences and health education at Rollins School of Public Health and assistant director of Emory's Center for AIDS Research, has just completed teaching one of Emory's first three MOOCs through Coursera, she realizes those enrollment numbers don't tell the whole story. Read more...