Across health professions, continuing education is crucial for maintaining licenses and certifications, staying up-to-date with advancements in the field, and improving patient care. This type of education is also an opportunity for upskilling, personal growth, and career advancement.

During times of uncertainty, these opportunities are especially important, and economic downturns drive learners to Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platforms like Coursera as 
a way to enhance their marketability and career prospects.

One of the benefits of Coursera, with whom the University of Minnesota has a partnership, is that its courses are fully online and self-paced, improving access to learners in rural and remote locations, not only in the U.S. but also in other countries around the world. Its courses are flexible and meant to accommodate the busy schedules of working professionals 
– including those in healthcare.

With its own Coursera specializations, the Bakken Center is meeting these needs and using the platform to spread awareness of whole health approaches and to expand access to high-quality resources for individuals seeking personal development as well.

Founder and Director of the Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing, Dr. Mary Jo Kreitzer says, “We are very committed to reaching healthcare professionals where there is such a need for learning about integrative therapies and healing practices. Coursera courses and specializations can be completed from the ease of one’s home or office.”

The Bakken Center has already developed two specializations: Integrative Health and Medicine (launched 2019) and Integrative Nursing (launched 2022). Between these specializations, the Bakken Center has seven courses, spanning subjects like Aromatherapy and Acupressure to Herbal Medicine and Mindfulness in Integrative Healthcare.

Although the Bakken Center couldn’t have predicted the COVID-19 pandemic that began only months after the launch of its first Coursera courses, these courses would end up providing timely, quality content on a global scale.

As we look to the future, these courses may be just as critical in a rapidly changing landscape of higher education and for health professionals on the job market.

Global Impact, Quality Courses

Since the launch of its first course  in 2019, the Bakken Center has enrolled more than 100,000 learners in its Coursera courses. The Integrative Health and Medicine specialization is our largest specialization, enrolling 26,000 students since 2019, and our most popular course is Herbal Medicine, which has enrolled more than 30,000 students on its own.

These learners are from around the globe — from 6 of 7 continents — and the Bakken Center values that global impact. Dr. Megan Voss, an instructor for two of our Coursera courses and the Bakken Center’s Director of Education, says, “It’s been incredibly meaningful to provide people across the globe with the knowledge and skills necessary to begin practicing elements of integrative nursing. It is our hope that by reaching more nurses across the globe, we are creating a ripple effect that will enhance our profession and the care received by many.”

Our courses provide high-quality learning experiences too, and our courses are rated higher than the typical course on Coursera. In fact, our learners rate our courses at 4.8/5 stars or greater on average. Our most popular course is Herbal Medicine, with a 4.9/5 rating. The secret to that quality is that our courses were designed by experts in their field, including content from prestigious guest speakers, and they were created in consultation with instructional designers and education specialists in the Bakken Center’s Learning Resources Group.

Beyond these ratings, we see the quality of these courses in more than 400 stories that our learners have shared with us. Our learners come from all walks of life from a first-year undergraduate studying nursing at an American university to a combat veteran writing their thesis on the treatment of combat-related PTSD. We hear from learners in various professions as well, ranging from nurses to massage therapists, surgical technologists, and even a financial manager, all of whom have found value in our courses.

Looking Behind & Looking Ahead

Bakken Center Coursera courses were initially developed as an opportunity for health professionals to upskill, for the Center to spread awareness of integrative approaches, and to make available high-quality information for individuals seeking personal development. This content also emphasized the importance of self-care for practitioners in healthcare. Now, in 2025, the Bakken Center is planning to update its courses and create new courses, too.

New needs for these types of courses have arisen with recent economic uncertainty and a rapidly changing higher education landscape faced with new federal regulations, enrollment challenges, emerging technologies, and learning trends. One of those rapidly growing trends is the “microcredential” — a non-credit certification earned through a course or a series of courses, such as those on Coursera, focused on a specific set of learning outcomes in a narrow field of learning.

In one recent survey (2024), 95% of students say that earning a microcredential will make them stand out to employers and help them land jobs upon graduation. In fact, due to the sudden demand, there is a race to develop the equivalent of a transcript for non-credit credentials, called Comprehensive Learner Records or Learning Employment Records.

It is also critical at this time to update our content to align with the changing field, best represented in the soon-to-be-released third edition of the Integrative Nursing textbook, co-edited by Center Director Dr. Mary Jo Kreitzer with contributions by many Center faculty. Dr. Voss is one of those contributors and leads the revision of our corresponding courses. In her own words, she sees the Coursera Platform as “an important part of our strategy for reaching nurses, prospective nurses, and other healthcare professionals across the world. The democratization of education is a value that Coursera was built on and one that resonates deeply with the mission and vision of the Bakken Center.”

Now, we are exploring  how we can leverage Coursera in our outreach work as well. According to Sue Nankivell, the Bakken Center’s director of business development and community relations, “Coursera is an accessible platform enabling the Center to offer educational programming for individuals and organizations here in Minnesota and around the world. 
The platform's credibility, ease of use, and reach make it a great way for the Center to engage new audiences in support of integrative, whole person health and wellbeing.”