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Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Sport Research Institute UAB

MOOC Olympic Games and the Media

Olympic Games and the Media MOOC course

The UAB Sports Research Institute, through the UAB Olympic Studies Centre, offers a MOOC (massive open and online course) on the Olympic Games and the media through the Coursera platform, the world leader in freely accessible online courses.

The Olympic Games and the Media is a five-week course taught in English, with subtitles in Spanish. Although it is open to all audiences, it is mainly aimed at undergraduate students. The course is coordinated and taught by Dr. Emilio Fernández Peña.

In the course, students discover the media universe and the role they have in the construction of the Olympic Games, the largest sporting event in the world. After learning about the role of the Olympic Games of the modern era in our culture and the main constituents of the Olympic Movement, the students focus on the media as funding bodies for the Olympic Games and the Olympic Movement, as disseminators of their value system and creators of the global image of the Games.


Course programme
More specifically, the course deals with:

  • The history of the media and the Olympic Games
  • Television rights and sponsorship programs
  • How the media works during the Olympics
  • Television production of the Olympic Games and audiences worldwide
  • The opening and closing ceremonies and the symbols and rituals of the Games
  • How the Olympic family manages new websites and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Students receive weekly study material consisting of video lessons with tests and reading suggestions and are asked to write multiple essays. Students can access the course for free and upon completion they will receive a Coursera certificate signed by the teacher.


About Coursera
Coursera is the most important platform for freely accessible online courses in the world, with more than six million students. A platform in which, in addition to the UAB, some of the world's most prestigious universities participate.

Additional information