BY: SPDC Communications

Michigan State University is well-known for creating a variety of opportunities for its students, faculty, and citizens globally, and has once again provided another great chance for education. For the past three years, MSUglobal has served as the hub for a series of courses offered through MSU, known as MOOCs. MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course, a proliferating online learning experience that is open to the public. Most MOOCs have staggering participation with thousands of enrollments.

These events are usually based around widely relevant topics that appeal to a diverse group. Topic submissions are also accepted from the public, should anyone have a course concept in mind.

The School of Planning, Design and Construction (SPDC) has been working closely with MSUglobal to host a series of MOOCs on Mega Event Planning. The first event focused on the 2014 Winter Olympics. The most recent MOOC took place in June and July and focused on the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

Mega events typically have some key characteristics—they are short, large-scale events with millions of spectators, they are expensive, and they draw an expansive audience and media presence.

The FIFA World Cup MOOC focused different aspects of the event, including the sport itself, its history, culture, politics, business and urban planning, as well as the logistics and development behind the World Cup in Brazil.

This MOOC series is overseen by Dr. Mark Wilson, Urban & Regional Planning (URP) Professor with Dr. Eva Kassens-Noor, URP Assistant Professor, both from SPDC, and Lisa Robinson, head of metadata management for MSU Libraries. 

When asked about the most interesting part of the MOOC Series experience, Dr. Wilson expressed that there were a number of things that were appealing about the series, including “teaching a mega event while it was happening, engaging with a global audience of participants, and developing content in new ways for a different audience.”

Development of new content took a variety of forms. As the MOOC courses are completely internet-based, all content was required to be digital. Videos were incorporated into this year’s MOOCS, along with the utilization of social networking sites.

“The Twitter interactions during the Sochi Opening Ceremony [at the Winter Olympics] was a lot of fun and added to the sense of joining a global event,” shared Dr. Wilson.

The majority of MOOC content is hosted on a web platform that specializes in large public online courses, called Canvas.

At least one more MOOC is planned for the Mega Event Planning Series. “We hope to offer a MOOC on World's Fairs when Expo2015 takes place in Milan next summer,” Dr. Wilson discloses.

Learn more about the Mega Event MOOC Series online.