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September 17, 2013
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We do a thing called “Zombie School” every year before The Walking Dead goes into production. It is run by Greg Nicotero, one of our executive producers and a great person who has scared you on film more times than you might realize. The basic idea of Zombie School is to give the extras who will portray some of the show’s most memorable (if fleeting) characters some training in the movements and sounds of the undead. I always thought there was a germ of an interesting idea in there along the lines of how even zombies can stand to benefit from a good education.
And now, an online technology company named Instructure and the University of California, Irvine have partnered with AMC to offer a free online course – a massive open online course, or MOOC, to be precise – inspired by themes and concepts taken straight out of The Walking Dead.
The eight-week course (“Society, Science, Survival: Lessons from AMC’s The Walking Dead”) will be offered on Instructure’s MOOC platform, Canvas Network, and taught by four UC Irvine professors who will focus on social science, public health, mathematics and physics. The first class is scheduled for Monday, October 14 – the day after the premiere of the show’s fourth season. Enrollment is open here.
The announcement of the course got a good amount of press attention and people definitely had fun with the idea of an academic effort inspired by zombies. But the effort really underscores something viewers of The Walking Dead already know – this show is about much more than the walkers, as vivid a presence as they provide. At its core, The Walking Dead is about leadership, character, survival and the ability to adapt to situations that are, at best, uncertain and, more often still, fraught with life-or-death challenges.
How would any of us survive in the face of a zombie apocalypse? What strategies and tactics would help us to endure in the face of these overwhelming, unpredictable and ever-shifting circumstances?
Hopefully, we will never need to find out, and the closest we will ever come to this world will be on Sunday nights on AMC. But there are certainly lessons to be learned from Rick and Daryl and the rest of the survivors who give life to The Walking Dead that can be applied to our own lives.
And, this fall, the millions of fans who have made this show such a unique piece of our popular culture will have a chance to participate in their own version of Zombie School; only this one comes without The Governor looking over anyone’s shoulder or a pack of flesh-eating zombies lurking around the corner. All the learning, without the life-threatening peril.
Featured on:Editor’s PicksLeadership & Management
Posted by:Charlie Collier