Increasing on-line, on-demand, core competency education materials for the development of the next generation energy professional utilizing the MOOC concept.

Abstract

There is need to educate the next generation workforce in a collaborative and interdisciplinary way; however – from an educational standpoint, this is not easy to achieve. This project will build and expand upon current efforts to take available resources to the next level both in terms of leveraging existing best practices and looking beyond to develop a MOOC model for workforce development in a high demand specialization area such as energy. The innovation of this project exist in that it will bring together a multi-university and industrial partnership in a very collaborative and interdisciplinary way to educate the next generation workforce, servicing students beginning at the post high school level all the way through a working professional looking to make a career change. These interdisciplinary collaborative partnerships are essential to increasing on-line, on-demand, core competency education materials for the development of the next generation energy professional utilizing the MOOC concept.