Online Learning Update

by Mandy Zatynski, the Quick and the Ed

A paper released recently by the Community College Research Center reminds the champions of MOOCs and other online initiatives of one very important detail: Not all students prefer an online education; many higher education students still want in-person discussions and on-the-spot feedback.

But that’s not to say it will stay that way.

http://www.quickanded.com/2013/05/considering-the-generational-divide-in-online-learning.html

by Laura Vanderkam, USA Today

This “blended learning” model — combining in-person teaching and online learning — is being tried in a growing number of innovative schools nationwide, such as those in the Mooresville School District in North Carolina, Carpe Diem charter schools in Arizona and Indianapolis, and several district schools in Oakland. Says Chaves: “We’re having an impact we couldn’t have in a traditional model school.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/05/05/blended-learning-win-win-situation-column/2137303/

by the Washington Post

Unique users who are taking courses through edX, a massive open online course venture that MIT and Harvard started a year ago. There are 26 massive open online courses (MOOCs) from MIT, Harvard, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Texas at Austin. Georgetown University is about to join the effort.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/education-numbers/2013/05/05/bf43688e-b27e-11e2-bbf2-a6f9e9d79e19_story.html

BY JANE STANCILL, Durham News

Duke University has backed out of a deal to offer for-credit courses through an online consortium, after faculty rejected the venture. In an abrupt reversal, Duke abandoned an agreement with the for-profit company 2U for its Semester Online program, in which a handful of universities provide online courses for credit to undergraduates at those schools. Duke officials had signed a preliminary deal with the company last year, as did UNC Chapel Hill.

http://www.thedurhamnews.com/2013/05/01/215427/duke-retreats-from-for-credit.html

By JON MARCUS, The Hechinger Report

Danine Adams has taken a few courses at a four-year university, some at a community college and still more online while working all over the country as an investigator for the Federal Bureau of Prisons — career experience that she’s also been able to transform into academic credit. A little from here. A little from there. And now Adams, 42, is just a few credits shy of earning a bachelor’s degree. “I’m the whole ball of wax,” she said cheerfully. “On-campus education, community college, online classes, life experience.” She’s also a forerunner of a new type of college student, one who doesn’t start and finish at a single brick-and-mortar campus, but picks and chooses credits toward a degree or job from a veritable buffet of education options. These include dual-enrollment courses — college-level courses offered to students while they’re still in high school — advanced-placement programs, military or corporate training, career and life experience, and classes taught online.

http://www.thestate.com/2013/05/04/2756552/online-options-abound-for-college.html

By George Leef, National Review

The Wall Street Journal ran an article by Michael S. Roth entitled “My Global Philosophy Course.” Roth is the president of Wesleyan University and found that while many students who signed up for his course (on Coursera) dropped before the end (only 4,000 of 30,000 stuck it out), there was remarkable intellectual energy among those who persisted. He writes, “I am sure that many of those enrolled in the online version have also discovered texts and people that are having profound effects on their lives.” I was struck by the remarkable diversity of the students who wanted to learn philosophy with Roth. “Study groups in Bulgaria and India, in Russia and Boston made me giddy at the reach of this kind of class.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/phi-beta-cons/347233/unexpected-support-moocs

by Nick Arroyo, Atlanta Journal Constitution

If you’ve decided to use your computer to pursue a college degree, you’re not alone. More than 6.7 million people, roughly a third of all postsecondary students, took an online course in 2011, according to the Babson Survey Research Group’s annual Survey of Online Learning.  Year-over-year online learning enrollment has grown steadily and sometimes explosively (23 percent in 2003, 36.5 percent in 2005 and 21.1 percent in 2009) during the last decade . About 70 percent of public and for-profit colleges offer full academic programs online and almost half of all private nonprofit colleges do, according to the survey.

http://www.ajc.com/news/business/online-learning-revolution/nXgHB/

By Nick Anderson, Washington Post

The start-up, a year old as of last Thursday, conveys a casual/hectic vibe in its office suite in Cambridge. Catered lunch and granola bars sustain the 20- and 30-somethings who work long hours building and servicing the Web platform. (One spring day there is Quiche Lorraine, tortellini and apple-cranberry salad.) For diversion, there is a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle of polar bears in progress on a table near the break room. A monitor hanging from the ceiling delivers real-time metrics on usage of the Web site. Sheets of paper posted on a wall seem to indicate the number of certificates earned by students who had passed edX courses: 31,291 as of late March. EdX spokesman Dan O’Connell later said that that total was based on incomplete data. The sheets have been taken down. The Web site, which now counts 890,000 unique users, does not have a full tally of MOOC students who have earned certificates, he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/edx-turns-1-now-what/2013/05/02/649236e0-b32d-11e2-9a98-4be1688d7d84_story.html

By AMNA H. HASHMI, Harvard Crimson

Sandel’s teaching in the edX “Justice” course was criticized by philosophy professors at San Jose State University. The Philosophy Department at San Jose State University condemned Harvard government professor Michael J. Sandel’s teaching of the edX course ER22x: “Justice” in an open letter sent this week. “We regard such courses as a serious compromise of quality of education and, ironically for a social justice course, a case of social injustice,” the letter read. As edX approaches the first anniversary of its founding, it has received criticism from faculty members at several institutions of higher learning across the country.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/5/3/san-jose-state-edx/

By JEFF SCHWEERS, Gainesville Sun

Creating an online university won’t be easy, but the University of Florida already has a good head start. The university has been providing online classes since the 1980s, starting with its popular MBA program. It currently offers 600-700 online courses across the curriculum, including several undergraduate degree completion programs for students who start out at community college, and several master’s degree programs. The university has been charged with creating a complete online undergraduate degree program from start to finish. And it must have those first programs ready to launch by Jan. 1.

http://www.theledger.com/article/20130502/NEWS/305025037/1002/sports?Title=UF-Pledges-Equivalent-Quality-of-Online-Courses

By TAMAR LEWIN, NY Times

San Jose State University has publicly committed to using online courses to bring in more students — and bring down costs — but its philosophy department is balking. Faculty members issued a blistering statement this week about why they will not use materials from an online course called Justice, taught by Michael Sandel of Harvard, an academic superstar. Mohammad H. Qayoumi, the president of San Jose State, has pushed his university to experiment with new online technologies through pilot projects with both edX, the nonprofit Harvard-M.I.T. online collaboration that offers Dr. Sandel’s course, and Udacity, a company producing the massive open online courses, known as MOOCs. But this week, the philosophy department sent Dr. Sandel an open letter asserting that such courses, designed by elite universities and widely licensed by others, would compromise the quality of education, stifle diverse viewpoints and lead to the dismantling of public universities.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/03/education/san-jose-state-philosophy-dept-criticizes-online-courses.html?_r=0

by Harvard Magazine

AS edX , Coursera, and Udacity continue to build and launch massive open online courses (MOOCs)—and other would-be contenders approach the field—evidence and opinions are accumulating about how best to use such courses, the experience of learning this way, and possible applications of the evolving technology. Herewith, a survey of some recent perspectives, and some news updates on the users of an early HarvardX course and Coursera’s expansion into professional education.

http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/05/harvardx-and-edx-online-learning-update

By Sean Coughlan, BBC News

The boring university lecture is going to be the first major casualty of the rise in online learning in higher education, says Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. The custodian of the world’s biggest online encyclopaedia says that unless universities respond to the rising tide of online courses new major players will emerge to displace them, in the way that Microsoft arrived from nowhere alongside the personal computer. “I think that the impact is going to be massive and transformative,” says Mr Wales, describing the importance of the MOOCs (massive open online courses) that have signed up millions of students.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22160988

By Jake New, Chronicle of Higher Ed

In a few weeks, Bernard Bull, assistant vice president for academics at Concordia University Wisconsin, will ask participants in his new course to cheat. There’s a caveat, though. They’ll have to disclose to the rest of the class exactly how they cheated. “Of course, if the assignment is to cheat, then you’re not really cheating,” Mr. Bull admitted. The assignment will be one unit in his new massive open online course, “Understanding Cheating in Online Courses,” which begins on Monday through the Canvas MOOC platform, run by Instructure, a course-management company. The eight-week course will explore the vocabulary, psychology, and mechanics of what he calls “successful cheating” in online learning.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/mooc-teaches-how-to-cheat-in-online-courses-with-eye-to-prevention/43699

By Sam Shames, MIT The Tech

Imagine if as a part of a requirement for the class, at the end our project our group compiled all of our work into a centralized website where someone could find all the information and tools necessary to complete our project. The website could contain videos, presentations, demos, papers, lab modules, and any other work we did on the project. The challenge would be determining how best to organize this information so it serves the needs of the person interested in learning about our work. In other words, our challenge would be to create a platform for digital learning. Imagine the ideas that would emerge if students in project-based classes all across the institute developed their own platforms. Not only will this result in a wide range of learning platforms, but encouraging students to think about how best to teach the concepts they learn for a project will cement the ideas they have learned and improve their communication skills. Furthermore, by seeing how helpful the different platforms are for students, the best practices can be identified and incorporated into the MITx platform. Experimenting with student created learning platforms will also allow MIT to better understand the ways in which its students use digital content.

http://tech.mit.edu/V133/N22/shames.html

by RIP EMPSON, Tech Crunch

While some institutions of higher learning have grown skeptical of the MOOC phenomenon spreading through its ranks (and the startups responsible), you have to give Coursera credit for keeping its foot on the gas. In less than six months, the MOOC startup has taken meaningful steps towards monetization and toward becoming a legitimate MOOC university, adding career services, verified certificates for a fee, courses for credit, along with teh addition of 29 new institutions (to bring its total to 62). Alongside its seven new educational partners, it’s also teaming up with more recreational institutions, including The Museum of Modern Art, the Exploratorium, the American Museum of Natural History and New Teacher Center. In other words, not only is Coursera expanding its course catalog to include the fundamentals of teacher up training and development, but it will also be allowing teachers to dive into more specific instructional topics, like “Integrating Engineering Into Your Science Classroom.”

http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/01/coursera-brings-online-instruction-to-teachers-taking-its-first-steps-into-the-k-12-market/

By Kim Clark, CNN @Money

The academic world is buzzing with the notion that this could change, well, everything. “We are at a pivotal moment,” says former Princeton president William Bowen. “Two forces are combining: extraordinary technological progress with economic need.” True, it’s a long way (and many spinning “video loading” icons) from here to a day when students can put together respected degrees with Ivy simulations. While logging in is free and easy, getting official credit for what you learn still isn’t. Online courses have bugs, including raucous student discussion boards and clumsy grading systems, and for many they are an inferior substitute for real classrooms. Yet there’s promise here for adults who want a new career skill, for traditional students looking for learning aids, and for anyone hoping to speed the path to a degree. More change is coming.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/01/pf/college/free-online-courses.moneymag/

by Penn State University

Penn State’s online campus, the World Campus, is poised to more than triple students enrolled in online education programs from 12,000 to 45,000 within the next decade. The University is committing $20 million over five years from World Campus revenues toward this new expansion goal. Penn State President Rodney Erickson announced the goal today (April 29) in a letter to the University community. This initiative is designed to help more people earn degrees by providing exceptional academic and co-curricular experiences for students who need the flexibility of online education while working and managing multiple responsibilities. By reinvesting revenue in the World Campus, Penn State intends to fund new technologies, provide additional faculty capacity, enhance student services, support research and development initiatives, and improve infrastructure and marketing efforts. This year, World Campus revenue is projected to total $90 million.

http://news.psu.edu/story/275043/2013/04/29/academics/penn-state-invest-20-million-grow-world-campus-45000-students

By TAMAR LEWIN, NY Times

Dazzled by the potential of free online college classes, educators are now turning to the gritty task of harnessing online materials to meet the toughest challenges in American higher education: giving more students access to college, and helping them graduate on time. Nearly half of all undergraduates in the United States arrive on campus needing remedial work before they can begin regular credit-bearing classes. That early detour can be costly, leading many to drop out, often in heavy debt and with diminished prospects of finding a job. Meanwhile, shrinking state budgets have taken a heavy toll at public institutions, reducing the number of seats available in classes students must take to graduate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/education/colleges-adapt-online-courses-to-ease-burden.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

by Inside Higher Ed

Coursera, the Silicon Valley-based provider of massive open online courses, is entering the teacher education market. The company is partnering with teachers colleges and other educational institutions to provide online professional development courses for K-12 teachers and parents. The company described the new effort as its first foray into early childhood and K-12 and its first partnerships with non-degree-bearing institutions, including art museums. With this, the company may be eyeing a professional development market that includes about 3.7 million teachers in American plus millions more across the world. “We want to help K-12 students by helping their teachers,” Coursera co-founder Andrew Ng said in a statement announcing the new program.

http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/05/01/coursera-enters-teacher-professional-development-market

By Brian Mathews, Chronicle Ubiquitous Librarian

One of the core objectives of the original land-grant program was to provide broader access to education. The federal government gave land to the states for schools based upon this mission. Fast-forward 150 years and now the government is endorsing virtual campuses. Online learning can potentially magnify the initial effort, enabling many more citizens the opportunity to advance their learning. Land-grant universities were designed to help transition into an industrial society– are we experiencing a similar transition into a digital society?

http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/theubiquitouslibrarian/2013/04/27/are-online-public-universities-the-new-land-grant-institution/