Forget cat photos: This prof is making calculus go viral

Posted on September 25th, 2014

Forbes Magazine profiles Jim Fowler, a 33-year-old assistant math professor at Ohio State University who teaches the Calculus One MOOC on Coursera. Fowler’s first run of the six-week course attracted 35,000 active enrollees. Since then, more than 110,000 additional students have started the 23-hour course, putting it in the top 3 percent of Coursera’s offerings. Coursera has moved the class to its “continuous enrollment,” so that students don’t need to wait for a new cycle of the course. Additionally, Fowler built MOOCulus, a website with a quiz program of customized hints and automatically generated extra problems in areas where individual students needed help. Fowler has spent 1,350 hours working on his online class, including evening visiting discussion boards and providing one-on-one tutoring for students who are stuck. He also calculates that about 3 percent of his online students drop out every day.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2014/09/10/forget-cat-photos-this-prof-is-making-calculus-go-viral/