University of the People – a tuition-free, non-profit online university – has offered to open up its courses to colleges that are scrambling to move classes online in response to the coronavirus.
The online university, founded in 2009, has 115 courses in general education, business administration, computer science, health science and education. For universities with similar course material but less online infrastructure, their students can take University of the People classes as a substitute.
Classes can be taught by University of the People faculty, or instructors from other colleges can lead courses themselves using the school’s platform. Professors from outside the university can also take advantage of the school’s week-long training in online teaching.
“Going online is not trivial,” said Shai Reshef, University of the People’s president and founder. “It’s not that you shut down the class, open a Zoom account and you can go online. You need to know how to do it. You need [to know] how to engage the students, how to teach them, how to support them, how to make it interesting. We felt that a lot of universities don’t know how to do it … We want them to do it right.”
It takes University of the People about half a year to implement an online course, Reshef noted. After courses are developed, they’re looked over by an instructional designer and peer reviewed. Meanwhile, following the coronavirus-related campus closures universities across the country are trying to move all of their face-to-face courses online within weeks.
So, as faculty scramble to reimagine their classes, he felt a sense of responsibility to his colleagues. At University of the People, the faculty, administrators and president’s council are all volunteers formerly or currently serving at other universities. They receive an honorarium for their time, but it’s a low-budget operation.
“We feel like we would not have been here without the higher education community,” Reshef said. “The academic world embraced us and helped us get to where we are, so we figure why not give back and give to everyone else?”
