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Where education stands as a highly serious
topic, how can it connect zombies? Well, it’s no less a bulletin that a US
television company, Edutainment is heading to establish a partnership with a
top-notch Californian university for producing online courses in connection
with a popular TV show.
With such an amazing initiative, digital
boundaries created between academia and the entertainment industry will be
blurred to a good extent. The course which will be based on the Walking Dead,
the popular post-apocalypse drama series, will be launched in the next month.
Although the television show comprise spin-off video games or merchandising,
this drama in regard to surviving disaster and social collapse will now be
having its own course.
University of California’s, Irvine who will
set up the online courses said these are going to be academically rigorous and
handle critical scientific issues in regard to the events included in the show.
For instance,
·
Physicists will be
investigating for the ‘Science behind decay’
·
Public health department will
make use of the series to conduct studies on questions like, “What can we learn
from past epidemics?”
·
Math lecturers will be
analysing on how “Post-calculus maths can be utilised for epidemic dynamics as
well as for modelling population.
A legitimate educational experience for online learners
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Theresa Beyer, the vice-president of AMC
says that this showbiz-academic partnership will help students and working professionals
enjoy a pure and legitimate educational experience. Moreover, the partnership
will also highlight another development in the Massive Open Online Courses that
have been established extensively and have even made way to the Oxford online
dictionary just a couple of weeks back.
Well, it was the previous year when
millions of students signed up for online courses. This showed how demanding
were these courses for completing higher studies. However, it was found that
those millions failed to complete the online courses since they couldn’t accept
the challenge of learning online.
MOOCs taking a new form
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Coming back to the zombie-based online
course, this will comprise around 8 modules and one would be able to easily
access it without paying any fee. On the other hand, universities will now be
producing MOOCs. This means that students who will be enrolling in universities
will grab the opportunity to give online tests and join discussion groups.
However, students who will complete the course will not be getting any formal
qualifications or credits. Therefore, the course will be designed for those who
wish to pursue it as per their own convenience.
Despite, a question has been raised whether
this online course will stand effective or not. University of California’s
Irvine says that they have researchers who are Nobel Prize winners and they
also contribute around 4.3 billion dollars to the local economy. In this
context, Melissa Loble, the university dean of distance learning, said, “When
we entered this partnership it was really important to make each of the modules
as academically strong as they would be in our classes at UC Irvine... the lessons
will be academically rigorous and rich....”
TV-based online courses might be a major hit
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University of Buckingham’s Alan Smithers
who is the director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research here
also have contributions towards strengthening the value of these TV-based
online courses. Smithers said that building connections with a popular TV show
might emerge to be a brilliant way of alluring students.
Josh Coates, head of In-structure said that
he wants people to take the Walking Dead course as a fine example for
connecting education and entertainment. In fact, the globalisation of this
online course can lend a new meaning and significance to education through
which one would find it easier to complete higher studies with ease.
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