When Penn State Extension officials made online courses free during April, public interest was overwhelming.
“We would’ve filled Beaver Stadium with students,” said Extension Director Brent Hales. “We had over 109,000 people sign up.”
There was so much demand — it initially crashed extension servers, Hales said — that officials decided to keep course enrollment free through May 10, and through the end of May all courses remain at a 75% discount.
“A couple years ago, we made the decision to invest pretty heavily on a non-credit online program offering with classes and certification,” Hales said. “So we just happen to be particularly well-placed to provide this service (during the covid-19 pandemic).”
The extension website has seen 1.1 million individual visitors in the past two months. That “is about what we normally get over the course of a whole year,” Hales said.
From beekeeping to Mediterranean cooking, grant writing and working with volunteers, the extension offers 57 unique courses.
“The content is very valuable because it’s a wide range of topics, including a specific group of courses we developed in response to the covid-19 situation,” Hales said. “We’ve had about 20,000 participants so far in those webinars.”
For a complete list of courses, see Extension.PSU.edu.
