GRO GEST with five Massive Open Online Courses in International Gender Studies

On Friday 17 November 2023 the GRÓ GEST programme hosted a launch event and celebration of the release of its first three Massive Open Online Courses in International Gender Studies.

GRÓ GEST was the first organization to develop Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on gender studies on the edX® platform. Founded by Harvard University and MIT in 2012, edX LLC is a leading MOOC provider. The edX platform is an online learning destination offering high-quality courses from the world’s best universities and institutions to learners everywhere.

Joining edX was a natural step for GRÓ GEST in its efforts to improve the quality and outreach of transnational knowledge transmission and exchange, and to adapt to rapidly changing technological environments in higher education.

The goal of GRÓ GEST’s Free Online Courses in International Gender Studies is to provide aspiring development workers, young gender equality professionals, and policymakers around the world with a knowledge base they can use to change the world for the better. Since 2020, more than 15.000 people from 170 countries have enrolled in one of GRÓ GEST’s MOOCs, and more than 600 people have finished one or more of the courses and received a signed edX certificate.

The event on November 17 featured live interviews and discussions with some of GRÓ GEST’s international online course instructors: Marsha Henry, Robert Morrell, Torunn Tryggestad, and Giti Chandra. The expert group reflected on the importance of online learning in the context of international development and the women, peace, and security agenda. The discussions were recorded in 4K by the Department of Digital Learning and Media under the Division of Academic Affairs. Edited versions of the presentations and discussions from the event will be made available via GRÓ GEST’s website and courses on edX.

GRÓ GEST currently has three massive open online courses available on edX, with two more in the pipelines:

• Gender and Development: Critical Theories and Approaches, a course that focuses on the development context specifically and puts it in a gendered perspective. This is the first of two courses that we developed with funding from ERASMUS+. Here learners can expect to be introduced to the main critical theories and topics necessary for understanding a complicated and sometimes contradictory relationship between gender equality and international development initiatives, such as The State, Security, Peacebuilding, Decolonization, and Implementation.

• Gender, Violence and Post-Conflict States, the first one to zoom in on a specific topic in international development, namely that of violence, and specifically violence as it plays out in conflict and post-conflict contexts. Here learners are introduced to different types of violence as well as gender-based violence in armed conflict, restorative and transformative justice, Apartheid, peacekeeping, and the main policy frameworks relating to violence in conflict, such as resolution 1325.

Two more courses are in the pipelines. Men, Boys & Masculinities launches in February 2024 and will provide a good introduction to masculinity studies and address gendered issues relating to men and boys across a variety of fields, such as media, education and innovation. A trailer for this course will be released in early 2024. Gender & Climate Change is in pre-production and launches sometime in early 2025.