The Andersen Course has been two years in the making. In 1997 a memo came across Professor Niels Ingwersen's desk concerning distance education. He had been teaching Andersen for 30 years with great success and decided he would teach it once more for this distance course. He signed on Bill Tishler from Learning Support Services and Scott Mellor from the Scandinavian Department to help him in the undertaking. Bill Tishler had work on several projects and brought with him film and camera expertise as well as an artistic flair. Scott Mellor had taught discussion sections with Professor Ingwersen in the past, so knew the material, and had developed the departmental web site.

In 1998 the three of them along with Faith Ingwersen, Professor Ingwersen's wife and scholar in her own right, and Susan Brantly, Scott Mellor's wife and Professor in Scandinavian Studies, all went to Denmark to film many sections of the course. It helps the students to see the many things Andersen lived with in his day-to-day life. In Denmark we filmed on location at places of interest and relevant to Andersen's life, and interviewed several top scholars in order to give the students the best understanding of Andersen and Andersen's impact of literature.