The Challenge

Education is one of the biggest segments impacted by the internet. To maintain relevance and to garner exposure, Universities from around the world are producing educational and classroom content to be distributed free over the internet. The method used in this growing trend is to produce a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). The leading platforms for distribution of MOOCs are Coursera and iTunes U.

Larry Sabato, the Director of the UVA Center for Politics, and Teresa Sullivan, President of the University of Virginia decided that a MOOC based on Sabato's forthcoming book The Kennedy Half-Century would be the perfect topic for a new MOOC for the University. Larry Sabato's need was to make the MOOC compelling, engaging, and not merely just another talking-head lecture series so prolific in the MOOC market.

Paladin Media Group broke the traditional MOOC model of filmed lectures in front of classrooms and instead decided to view the content like a series of short documentaries. Breaking the course into 42 lessons that run 8 - 12 minutes each helped make the content easily digestible topics. The script was created from sections of the book and filming occurred in a variety of locations (none of which were classrooms) around the historic universities grounds. We incorporated a large amount of historical archive video, still images, and audio of John F. Kennedy's life and administration. The course also covered the impact that Kennedy has had on each of the nine presidents since he was assassinated.

The Solution

The University of Virginia Center for Politics successfully launched The Kennedy Half-Century MOOC as an 8 week course on Coursera and a full course download on iTunes-U. The results exceeded expectations and set records. Coursera reported 40,000+ registrants for the initial course offering with a completion rate that far exceeded average completion rates for previous courses. iTunes-U reported 60,000+ downloads with the initial offering. A year later both platforms report combined downloads in excess of 200,000. The Kennedy Half Century MOOC continues to be one of the most popular courses online.

The Results

Since the initial launch we created five new lessons based on new material and a mobile application built around the audio files. These items were released to coincide with the paperback release of The Kennedy Half-Century.