Global Issues Core Course Goes Online

In a move announced last fall and continuing to receive much national publicity, Fairleigh Dickinson University has become the first traditional university to require each student to take one online course for every 32 credits of study. Global Issues, which examines subjects that concern all peoples of the world, will be taken within the first two semesters and will satisfy the distance-learning requirement for the freshman year.

 “The selection of this course is especially appropriate considering our global mission,” said Michael Sperling, interim dean, University College, T-H, who is coordinating the implementation of the distance-learning initiative. “In this online course, freshmen will be reaching out through the Web to the world of information, and faculty from around the world will reach back to our students.”

Sperling added that a significant portion of the course Global Issues, about 25 percent, already was available online. “The nature of the subject material lends itself very well to searching for global resources you can find on the Web.”

The course will be redesigned for Web-delivery and the move is subject to final confirmation by the Academic Policies and Research Committee, the Faculty Executive Committee and the faculty assemblies. The current proposal would require all incoming freshmen to take Global Issues online. All other students will take the course in the traditional classroom environment.

The sequence of Core courses also will be changed for incoming freshmen. Global Issues, formerly Core IV, will now be taken first, followed by Perspectives on the Individual (formerly Core I), Cross-Cultural Perspectives (formerly Core III) and The American Experience: The Quest for Freedom (formerly Core II). All other students will register for Core courses according to the sequence currently in place.

FDU is in the process of developing more online offerings to satisfy the distance-learning requirement, as well as establishing relationships with scholars and institutions throughout the world. Sperling estimates that over the next three or four years, approximately 90–100 individual online courses will be developed.

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