Penn Professors to Bring Social Good Courses to Coursera

Coursera allows people from all over the world to take classes on a wide variety of subjects–ranging from business and management, biology and life sciences to arts and culture. The University of Pennsylvania is one 0f 83 institutions currently offering online classes through the platform.

In April, Penn will launch its first course on Social Entrepreneurship–the course will also be the first Coursera course offered by the School of Social Policy & Practice at Penn. The course will run from early April to mid-May for six weeks.

“It will be a course designed to teach students the essential skills and tools needed to conceive and launch a social purpose organization,” said one of the instructors for the course, Peter Frumpkin, the faculty director at the Center for High Impact Philanthropy. The course will be taught in conjunction with Wharton School’s Ian MacMillan and James Thompson.

Frumpkin says the course was formed to allow more than just those who can afford Penn’s classes.

“I had the idea of why not do something on Coursera that would open up this field to thousands of people instead of the small group that can afford the Penn classes,” Frumpkin said. “And ironically, at the exact same time Jim and Mac had the same idea so we both applied simultaneously to do a Coursera class.” They then combined their proposals to create the one course.

The course focuses on four big areas of social entrepreneurship: the idea of how do you define a problem, how do you design an intervention, how do you launch a pilot or test of that idea and how do you refine and scale the idea. Within those, they’ll teach skills such as design thinking, the logic model, beneficiary analysis, performance measurement, scale and growth tools, and more.

Frumpkin said the course can apply both to potential nonprofit and for profit ideas. “Any one who is either currently wanting or contemplating starting an organization whose primarily purpose is creating public value or social good,” he said. “It can be a for profit or a nonprofit, we’re agnostic when it comes to sectors.”

In addition to the Social Entrepreneurship course, Professor Kevin Werbach’s course on Gamification, which begins on January 27, includes an aspect on social good. Gamification is the use of games for other goals, such as engagement and education.

“The unit on gamification for social good and behavior change examines the particular challenges of applying gamification for social impact.  It describes some of the areas where gamification is being used, such as health and wellness, sustainability, education, and government initiatives,” Werbach said.  “It looks at how the basic techniques of gamification may need to be adapted for these settings.  And it delves into the psychology of behavior change, which is an important element of many of these scenarios,” he added.

For more information on either course offering, check out Penn’s Coursera Page and Penn’s Social Impact Course Guide.