Yesterday (Wednesday October 10) we were pleased to see the launch of Dukes second Coursera MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), Introduction to Genetics and Evolution. Led by Dr. Mohamed Noor, the course bills itself as a whirlwind introduction to evolution and genetics.

As we observed in Dukes first Coursera MOOC on Bioelectricity, the course discussion boards lit up almost immediately with students eager to begin. The site recorded over 1000 posts and 10,000 comments in the past 24 hours. As expected, virtual and in-person study groups began to form right away (both within the course site and outside of it).

Who are these students and where are they? Based on a pre-course questionnaire sent out by the instructor, over 120 countries are represented and 2/3 of the students reside outside of the United States. Professor Noor is delighted at the level of activity and enthusiasm from thestudents enrolled in the course from the first day, andhappy to see the breadth of students participating 8th graders toretirees, those in evolution graduate programs to those who haventfinished high school, the breadth of countries represented for example,there were enough people from the Philippines enrolled to organize aFilipino study group!

To give a blurred snapshot of a rapidly moving target, here are few quick numbers about the course since its launch yesterday:

Professor Noor commented today, Its going to be hard for me to restrainmyself from spending many hours a day watching the discussion forumposts that appear literally almost every minute!

Yvonne leads program evaluation for CIT and provides leadership to library assessment efforts as head of the library's Assessment Core Team. Her work includes serving on library- and university-wide planning committees and working groups, and she also directs evaluation activities for the Clinical Research Training Program in the School of Medicine at Duke. Her interests include organizational learning, utilization-focused evaluation, survey design and evaluation capacity-building.

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Genetics and Evolution, Duke's Second Coursera Course, Begins

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