What is a distance learning course on visual journalism, and who is it for?
The course was created in cooperation with former AP interactive producer Matt Ford. It is designed for journalists and editors of online media who lack skills in visual journalism. The course is designed so that all participants are trained through the practice of creating visual content for their online media.
When creating the course, we ensured that it incorporated modern features of MOOC. All training materials were informed by projects like coursera.org, but there was one important difference. Our course was interactive. Each student could ask an instructor for advice directly at any time. Students participated in weekly online video conferences with the instructor, where they discussed the results of the past study week and analyzed their accomplishments via live video communication. They had the opportunity to correspond with other team members and with the instructor. In three weeks, journalists left 232 messages in the "Discussions" section and 182 letters in the "Messages" section of the course platform.
http://innovation.internews.org/blogs/first-distance-learning-course-visual-journalism-lessons-learned