Intellectual Humility Massive Open Online Course

The Templeton Foundation is currently investing in three major funding initiatives on the study of intellectual humility (IH): the “Science of Intellectual Humility” initiative ($5.3M), the “Philosophy and Theology of Intellectual Humility” initiative ($3M), and the “Development, Validation, and Dissemination of Measures of Intellectual Humility and Humility” initiative ($1.5M). These generous grants are generating a tremendous amount of energy, interest, and excellent scholarship on IH; however, none of them include any measure for capturing and disseminating this research for the broader public on a massive scale. The proposed project aims to satisfy such an end. Drawing on (i) Dr Church’s unique experience as a Research Fellow with two of the previous IH initiatives, (ii) the research and resources produced by these grants, and (iii) Prof Pritchard’s experience as Director of Edinburgh’s Eidyn research centre, which has spearheaded massive open online courses (‘MOOCs’) in philosophy, this project aims to construct, administer, and successfully conduct a MOOC on the science, philosophy, and theology of IH. If commensurate with the success of the Eidyn’s Introduction to Philosophy MOOC, enrollment for the IH MOOC would be expected to be 100K+ students worldwide. In the first phase of this 30 month project, Dr Church will finish his monograph (currently in progress) on intellectual humility, which will provide a synoptic overview of the finding and outputs of the previous IH funding initiatives and function as the primary text for the course. At the same time, the PIs will organize and coordinate the 10 lectures from leading scholars (in most cases these will be awardees or PIs of previous IH initiatives) that will make up the course. In the second phase, Dr. Church, with the help of the Eidyn faculty and staff, will oversee, administer, and refine the MOOC. The resulting IH MOOC will then run biannually permanently, hosted by Eidyn.