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Now it’s Andrew Bacevich’s turn to do a MOOC

Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies opened its first Massive Open Online Course Wednesday, free and accessible to all students with Internet access around the world.

The MOOC, War for the Greater Middle East, is taught by Professor Emeritus Andrew Bacevich, who retired from BU on Aug. 31. The course, which Bacevich formerly taught to BU students in a classroom setting, is instructing students on U.S. military policy in the Islamic world since 1980, Bacevich said in an email.

“I want them [students] to see the relationship between a whole series of U.S. military actions that have occurred over the past 30-plus years in places ranging from Libya all the way to Pakistan,” he said.

More than 10,000 students have enrolled in the online course to date, Bacevich said. At the end of the fall 2014 semester, the university will evaluate War for the Greater Middle East to determine whether the class will continue to run.

Bacevich compared the teaching format of a MOOC to a “play usually performed in a theater before a live audience is made into a TV series,” and said constructing the course helped him gain a handle on material he will present to students across the globe...

Read entire article at The Daily Free Press