Olympic Games and the Media (Coursera MOOC)

The Olympic Studies Centre at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (CEO-UAB) promotes a MOOC Course (Massive Open Online Course) on the Olympic Games and the Media in the Coursera platform, the most important platform of open online courses in the world.

The Olympic Games and the Media is a 5-week course taught in English, with subtitles in Spanish. Its main target are undergraduate students. The course is produced by a team of more than 6 people led by Dr. Emilio Fernández Peña the director of the Olympic Studies Centre (CEO-UAB), instructor of the course.

By taking the course, students explore the universe of media and their role in the construction of the Olympic Games, the greatest sporting event worldwide. After learning on the role of the modern Olympic Games in our culture and the main constituents of the Olympic Movement, students then focus on the media as funding organisations of the Olympic Games and the Olympic Movement, as disseminators of its values system and creators of the global image of the Games.

More specifically, the course deepens into:

• The history of media and the Olympic Games
• The television rights and sponsorship programs
• How the media operate during the Olympics
• The television production of the Olympic Games and their worldwide audiences
• The opening and closing ceremonies and the symbols and rituals of the Games
• The management of new media and social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter by the Olympic Family.

Students receive every week teaching materials consisting of video lessons with embedded quizzes and suggested short readings, and are asked to produce various essays. Students can enroll to the course for free and, after completion, will obtain a Coursera Certificate of Accomplishment signed by the instructor.