Comics have reached a new frontier thanks to Ball State University Professor Christina Blanch. Enrollment is now open for Blanch’s new course “Gender through Comic Books”, which will use comics to explore “questions of gender identity, stereotypes, and roles.” The course is structured as a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that allows anyone with internet access to enroll for free and participate in the course. According to the course description, students will have access to video lectures, online discussions, and real time interviews.
A veritable red carpet of comic book industry writers and artists have come out to support and participate in Blanch’s course. Brian K. Vaughn (Y, The Last Man), Gail Simone(Wonder Woman, Batgirl, Birds of Prey) and Mark Waid (Daredevil, The Incredible Hulk, and Irredeemable) are only a few comic industry notables who will be interviewed for the course. Known for his many works as a writer for both DC and Marvel Comics, Waid has put out a call to all his fans asking them to help spread the word about enrollment. Waid calls the course, “a revolutionary way to marry comics and education using technology,” and perhaps he’s right in more ways than one.
Blanch is hosting this course through Canvas Network, a relatively new Learning Management System (LMS) similar to those now used by most colleges and universities. Canvas claims to have a superior blend of open source accessibility and commercial stability sorely lacking in other systems. Although Canvas has many of the standard features of an LMS, what’s markedly different is the way those features are presented. Several other LMS designs make for a convoluted user experience while Canvas is designed from the ground up to create a streamlined experience similar to the social media and entertainment sites most students already use.
Perhaps the strangest feature of this course is not the subject matter or the new design but simply the fact that it’s free. Making higher education available for free to anyone who can get to a computer is a radical concept. Professor David Wiley of Brigham Young University perhaps puts it best when he says that, “I don’t think there’s a monopoly on great teaching at any [learning institution] so to have a platform like Canvas Network that is open to anyone coming to participate sort of democratizes it in a way that the whole open movement is supposed to be about. “
Whatever draws a student to take this course — the subject matter, the innovative platform, or the price — enrollment is now open and the class begins April 2.
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