Kent launches free online course in Erlang

Today Kent launched the pilot K-MOOC (Kent massive open online course) in Functional Programming in Erlang (a programming language) with over 500 participants.

The K-MOOC is a joint project led by Professor Simon Thompson from the School of Computing, Mark O’Connor, a Distance Learning Technologist for the University, and Stephen Adams, who is the Teaching Assistant for the course and a PhD student in computer science.

This K-MOOCs project is being supported by the University of Kent as part of its Beacon Projects initiative, which is in celebration of the University’s 50th anniversary. The Erlang K-MOOC aims to explore the feasibility of the University of Kent offering MOOCs, with the ultimate aim to showcase and promote expertise, scholarship and research at Kent for a global audience.

All staff and students are invited to the Beacon Tea Party on Monday 11 May at 3.30pm in the Colyer-Fergusson building to celebrate the launch of this and other Beacon Projects and to find out more.

Simon said: ‘We recorded some master classes in a studio with green screen and these are in the final stages of production, but the majority of the K-MOOC lectures are more “home made” and were recorded on my MacBook Pro, using the built in audio and video facilities, and Kent’s lecture recording facilities that are powered by Panopto. Given that “available tech” approach, we’ve been pleased with the results.’

Simon Thompson will blog about the K-MOOC as it progresses.