An initiative announced Thursday by 10 U.S. colleges and universities, including Vanderbilt, Northwestern and Brandeis, promises to bring top-quality online courses to students from all over the country and even the world. But don't call it a MOOC.

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"This is actually the polar opposite," said Jeremy Johnson, president of the initiative, called Semester Online. He's also co-founder of 2U, which for about four years has supported online master's degree programs for universities.

Unlike MOOCs (massive open online courses), which are free and open to anyone with an Internet connection, Semester Online classes will charge students to enroll, and class sizes will be limited to 15 to 20 students each. Also unlike MOOCs, students will be able to earn college credit right out of the gate.

Participating institutions see it as another opportunity to explore how technology can best expand and improve education. Earlier this week, the American Council on Education announced it would coordinate efforts to study the academic potential of MOOCs, which are largely unregulated, but have quickly emerged as an important development in higher education.

Semester Online offers a different model. Details are still being worked out, but faculty at participating schools will design and teach the courses, which will be open only to academically qualified students. Schools within the consortium would award credit for the courses, which would include real-time discussions.

Rogan Kersh, provost at Wake Forest University, one of the partner schools, said Semester Online enables universities to have more control as they experiment with the online environment.

"This landscape is both quickly shifting and murky at the same time," he said. "No school has a really clear picture of how they're going to use technology."

Kersh said Wake Forest is not ready to consider MOOCs because of its commitment to small classes and face-to-face interaction. Duke, another participating school, is also participating in MOOCs.

"We're experimenting," Duke Provost Peter Lange said. "We believe both educational models have merit, and we're interested in seeing how they both go."

Other participating schools include Emory, The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, University of Notre Dame, University of Rochester and Washington University in St. Louis.

USA Today