A folk-healing ritual is presented as part of the face-to-face iteration of the course.
The University of New Mexico’s popular course on Southwestern folk healing, already offered as a summer intensive course for both degree-seeking and continuing education populations, is successfully “translated” for digital delivery to both local and global audiences.
UNM’s course “Traditional Medicine Without Borders: Curanderismo in the Southwest & Mexico” has long been locally popular; it has been offered each summer on the Albuquerque campus for fifteen years, bringing traditional Mexican healers to campus in conjunction with academic sessions. The summer course not only encourages engagement with regional indigenous traditions and history, it brings together a wide variety of students; degree-seekers can enroll for credit, while interested community members can enroll through UNM Continuing Education.
In recent years the university sought to present this unique content in a digital modality. Having begun by offering the course as an online semester-long course for its degree-seeking population (making it available during the regular school year for students who might not be taking summer courses), in 2014 UNM partnered with Coursera to offer the curanderismo course as a MOOC. The content was equally popular when delivered online; second and third iterations of the MOOC will be offered this summer and fall.
The combination of rich content and local expertise has brought this region-specific course to a global audience without compromising engagement or quality.
