UNSW’s first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to be offered via the education platform Coursera goes live on Monday, 28 April and more than 20,000 students have already enrolled.

The MOOC has been developed at UNSW Canberra by Dr Mike Ryan and Dr Ian Faulconbridge, who are highly experienced and well-respected practitioners in systems engineering, an interdisciplinary field that focuses on the design and management of complex engineering projects over their life cycles.

The nine-week UNSW course is believed to be the first MOOC to cover systems engineering in a comprehensive way. Watch the intro video here.

UNSW’s next two MOOCs – 'Learning to Teach Online' and 'Mechanics: Motion, Forces, Energy and Gravity, from Particles to Planets’ – will launch in July and August respectively.

UNSW announced in 2013 that it was joining some of the world’s leading universities, including Stanford, Yale and Columbia, in partnering with US-based Coursera, the largest provider of MOOCs.

“To launch such a high-quality, popular course as our first MOOC with Coursera marks a significant milestone for UNSW,” Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) Professor Iain Martin said.

“We have learnt a great deal from the development of our first MOOC. This knowledge will not only inform future open courses but will also help us to enhance the educational experience of our own on-campus students.”

Enrolment in the Introduction to Systems Engineering course is free to anyone, from novices to experienced practitioners such as project managers, engineers, and quality assurance representatives. The course comprises eight modules delivered through video lectures, readings, quizzes and a series of exercises, including peer-review of other students’ work.

“We are delighted to be offering the first MOOC in systems engineering and we are looking forward to providing the course as an ‘entrée’ to further higher learning,” said Dr Ryan.

“It provides a rare opportunity for a large number of people to be exposed to such a critical discipline in a complex, changing world.”

For more information on UNSW MOOCs visit https://www.coursera.org/unsw

Media contact: Denise Knight, UNSW Media Office, 0405 207 685 d.knight@unsw.edu.au