
Peter Decherney
Peter Decherney is the Faculty Director of the Online Learning Initiative. With OLI’s Executive Director, he advises the Provost and Vice Provost for Education on Penn’s online learning strategies and policies; he works with Penn’s twelve schools to develop their online programs; and he oversees the many responsibilities of Penn’s Online Learning Initiative office.
Peter is a Professor of English and Director of the Cinema & Media Studies program, with a secondary appointment at the Annenberg School for Communication. He developed a pioneering open online course (a MOOC) on the history of Hollywood, and he has taught for-credit online courses. He has has received teaching awards that recognize his innovation in the classroom, his influence on national education policy, and his commitment to teaching non-traditional students. Peter’s many books include Hollywood and the Culture Elite, which examines the introduction of film into Ivy League curricula as early as the 1910s. And he has written about intellectual property’s impact on higher education for the New York Times, Forbes, and other publications. Peter has spent the past several summers doing the opposite of online education, taking small groups of students to China, Kenya, and Puerto Rico to engage local communities in the the production of participatory documentary films.