Online courses : communicating knowledge to a large public

Pierre Binétruy : Shooting of Gravity!

New ways for the dissemination of scientific knowledge have recently appeared. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) represent a new way of reaching a large interested public, using innovative technologies and teaching skills. They also create a community thanks to forums, interactive exercises and hangouts.

Gravité!, first online course of the Endowment Fund, which started on France Université Numérique in the spring of 2015, presents the fascinating world of the Universe without any mathematical formula!

Gravity! the second online course proposed by the Endowment fund is addressed to an English-speaking public. With a format similar to the French Gravité!, it was launched in the Fall of 2015 on the British platform Futurelearn, with an impressive success (70 000 registered learners throughout the world). It has now reached its third session.

To this day, more than 95 000 learners have registered to this course, from all the world. A record for a scientific on-line course!

Donations received by the endowment fund are used to meet the costs of achieving these on-line courses: materials for conceiving, filming, editing, animations, communication …

Discover the teaser of Gravity!

Or visit our site gravity.paris dedicated to what is going on in the gravitational Universe.

Gravity! for high school

Given the success of the online course Gravity! we decided to develop a version addressed more specifically to high school students. As a first step, the specific resources (exercises, simulations, examples of experiments easily feasible) will be available to these high school students. An exemplary partnership with the International School Jeannine Manuel has been set up so that these resources are designed by high school students themselves, for other high school students.

For more details, see our specific action.