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"While universities from Harvard to Pratt are grappling to deal with the impact of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on traditional forms of education, controversial online education provider&amp;nbsp;Coursera has just announced a partnership with the Museum of Modern Art to provide professional development MOOCs for primary and secondary school teachers. The first MoMA MOOC, \u201CArt and Inquiry,\u201D which commences on July 29, is a free online course that instructs teachers in \u201Cmuseum teaching strategies\u201D for the classroom.&amp;nbsp;Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, formerly of early MOOC provider Udacity, launched Coursera in April 2012 with $16 million in venture capital. They now have over four million users, or&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;\u201CCourserians\u201D&amp;nbsp;as they call them, and 83 institutional partners including Princeton University, Berklee College of Music, the California Institute of the Arts and the&amp;nbsp;American Museum of Natural History.While MoMA already provides online courses&amp;nbsp;at the cost of $150-$350, as well as a \u201CLearning website\u201D that provides things like slide sets, videos, and images to teachers for free, this venture combines the two by providing an online class to teachers at no cost. The Coursera class, which already has 8,000 enrollees, is being created by Lisa Mazzola, MoMA\u2019s assistant director in charge of school and teacher programs. According to a description on Coursera\u2019s website, it will \u201Cintroduce ways to integrate works of art into your classroom by using inquiry-based teaching methods commonly used in museum settings.\u201DDeborah Howes, director of digital learning in MoMA's Department of Education, says that the current MoMA learning website is not enough. \u201CTeachers also need modeling and mentoring on how to use museum materials and teaching methods effectively,\u201D&amp;nbsp;Howes wrote in a blog post on MoMA\u2019s website. \u201CWe offer some on-the-ground teacher workshops on this subject, but we never have enough space or time to accommodate the large number of teachers who request help.\u201D&amp;nbsp;While MOOCs have recently produced a lot of hype, with Harvard and MIT launching their own Ivy League MOOC website called&amp;nbsp;edX, many educators and experts are wary of their rapid proliferation. Although the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently pledged $3 million to MOOC-related grants, Dan Greenstein, the head of postsecondary success at the Gates Foundation, has expressed concern.&amp;nbsp;\u201CFor the presidents and chancellors I\u2019ve met with, their innovation exhaustion comes out in an obvious and growing frustration with MOOCs,\u201D Greenstein wrote in an&amp;nbsp;Inside Higher Ed&amp;nbsp;op-ed.&amp;nbsp;\u201CFor them, MOOCs are a perfect storm of hype, hyperbole, and hysteria \u2013 and yet many have plunged headlong into them without a real clear sense of why or how MOOCs can help more students succeed.\u201DThe relationship between arts education and MOOCs is a fraught one. Recently, Pratt Dean Andrew W. Barnes&amp;nbsp;told his staff that he did not support the Brooklyn art college joining in on the MOOC trend, although Pratt has not created any official anti-MOOC policy.&amp;nbsp;\u201CAs more and more universities migrate toward the&amp;nbsp;MOOC&amp;nbsp;movement, the difference between what they do and what we do will become more apparent,\u201D Barnes wrote in an email sent to faculty and staff.&amp;nbsp;\u201CAnd, the choice students will have about college will make us more attractive in much the same way that organic produce and locally sourced restaurants and community-based stores have become more attractive.\u201D&amp;nbsp;On the other hand, while the MOOC issue remains unsettled in the halls of higher learning, the MoMA MOOC may turn out to be an interesting alternative for providing free and expert arts education to&amp;nbsp;primary and secondary school teachers&amp;nbsp;amid the menace of declining arts education funding nationwide."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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