The University of Maryland recently selected START to design and teach a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) offered through Coursera. START’s “Understanding Terrorism and the Terrorist Threat” was one of only four new courses selected this year to receive $10K in funding from the university.
Set to debut early next year, the START course will be led by START Director and Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice Gary LaFree and START Executive Director Bill Braniff. It will explore questions relating to the who, the what and the how of terrorism studies by introducing students to cutting edge research and the experts investigating these topics.
Through lectures, guest lectures and readings, START will apply its multi-disciplinary and mixed-method approach to research in this course, utilizing theory and quantitative and qualitative research from a range of the social and behavioral sciences including Criminology, Psychology, Political Science and Communications Studies.
In addition to LaFree and Braniff, START researchers Gary Ackerman, Victor Asal, Laura Dugan, Josh Freilich, Arie Kruglanski, Tony Lemieux, Gina Marie Ligon, Clark McCauley, Erin Miller, Amy Pate, Paxton Roberts, Pete Simi, Brent Smith and Joe Young will offer lectures.
The course is currently open for enrollment at https://www.coursera.org/course/understandingterror, with a course start date of January 27, 2014.
The university’s announcement of the MOOC, can be found here.