The final report issued to Yale College Dean Mary Miller details the committee’s findings and recommendations for the University’s development of an online education program. The committee, led by psychology professor Paul Bloom and music professor Craig Wright, convened in September to assess and consider ways to expand Yale’s online educational presence so that non-Yale students can benefit from Yale resources and teaching. The recommendations from this report will be discussed at Thursday’s Yale College faculty meeting.

“Yale has this mission — the creation, preservation and dissemination of knowledge. This is dissemination,” Bloom said. “We’re extremely excited for the use of digital initiatives to disseminate knowledge and we plan to move forward building upon the strengths we’ve already established.”

The report also separately encourages faculty members to experiment with making their course materials public on a larger scale such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), which provide free online lecture courses to anyone who signs up — a platform embraced by a number of Yale’s peer institutions. Miller said the University is proceeding carefully in the realm of online education, and therefore not committing to a certain program.

Via The Yale Daily News