Northwestern will launch its first of three planned massive open online courses Monday for 2014, following the launch of its first MOOCs in Fall 2013.

A course on content strategy for professionals begins Monday with about 24,000 registered students. Taught by 10 professors from the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications and the Kellogg School of Management. NU’s Media Management Center launched the course, which will focus on engaging audience through credible content.

McCormick Prof. Eric Masanet will begin a course Jan. 25 focusing on an environmental analysis of life cycles. The more than 10,000 students who have registered will learn how to assess environmental footprints of different items.

NU’s first three MOOCs drew more than 68,000 interested students from around the world. To host the courses, NU partnered with Coursera, an educational technology company.

In an news release, Provost Dan Linzer touted the success of NU’s MOOCs.

“It has been fascinating to observe how creatively faculty members teaching our first three MOOCs have applied and plan to apply their online course materials to the learning experiences of Northwestern students on campus,” Linzer said. “Our undergraduate, graduate and professional students are gaining directly from these professors’ experimentation with new modes of teaching and learning.”

Another MOOC in digital imaging, taught by McCormick Prof. Aggelos Katsaggelos, is set to begin March 31. About 20,000 students registered for the course, which will focus on video processing that could be useful for scientists and software developers.

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