Massive open online courses, or MOOCs, are garnering lots of attention these days. Some see large-scale, web-based classes as the new frontier for colleges and universities, a great leap forward that could revolutionize higher education. Duke University professor of psychology and behavioral economics Dan Ariely and his colleagues at the Center for Advanced Hindsight, on the other hand, see MOOCs as the perfect way to test Dan’s academic funny bone. Will the jokes that work in a traditional college classroom work in a class of say, several thousand online students? We threw similar questions at the thousands of students subjected to the jokes each week. Using the five-point scale, we asked them how funny and how offensive they found each of Dan’s wisecracks. We also asked them to predict Dan’s own ratings: how funny did their teacher consider each of his own jokes?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-mcgraw-and-joel-warner/a-professor-walks-into-a-_b_3283684.html

A new report from Connected Tennessee, a local broadband consortium in partnership with the East Tennessee Educational Technology Association, shows that online education is important at all levels of schooling even K-12. According to the report, students that become comfortable with technology early on, learn better and are better prepared for jobs of the future. Online learning is also helping minorities in Tennessee get ahead. Data in the report shows that half of the minority population in Tennessee goes online for e-learning, that number is significantly higher than caucasians in the state. Hard to reach populations like rural residents are also getting online, 39% of rural residents in the state go online for coursework or work related activities.

http://civsourceonline.com/2013/05/16/tennessee-education-report-shows-online-learning-essential-for-k-12/

Classes can be a serious strain on both your calendar and your wallet. Are they educational? Yes. Necessary? Yes. Expensive? Absolutely. Time consuming? Without a doubt. As technology improves and more courses are offered online, students are increasingly turning to web-based courses to alleviate the time constraints imposed by the traditional university structure. For out-of-state students, the benefits are seemingly twofold: not only do online courses save transit time — sometimes, they’re also half price. At the University of Oregon, online courses follow one of two fiscal models: tuition based, or self-supporting. In accordance with the Oregon University System, tuition-based online classes differentiate in price according to residency status and credit load and are managed through individual UO departments. Self-supporting courses, however, are offered through a department in conjunction with the office of Academic Extension and follow a set fee determined by Academic Extension. This results in a set price, regardless of residency status.

http://dailyemerald.com/2013/05/16/online-courses-offer-economic-incentive-to-out-of-state-students/

A merged model: San José State has been experimenting with combining classroom and online education, and it cites impressive improvements in the proportion of students who advance to the next level. It is also at the centre of one of the biggest debates in US higher education, thanks to an experiment that is combining conventional and online learning. As administrators and politicians push to provide online courses that they say will take the pressure off underfunded and oversubscribed conventional ones, some academics – including philosophy scholars at San José State – are pushing back. In some disciplines, the professors say in an open letter, online courses are turning faculty members into glorified teaching assistants. In the California State Senate, a bill has been introduced that would open the door for students who cannot get into entry-level courses to sit the same subjects provided by online players (including for-profit companies) approved by a committee of academics.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/can-san-jos-show-us-academy-the-way/2003779.article

U.Va.’s decision last summer to enter into a partnership with Coursera, which also offers an online platform for courses offered by Stanford University, Princeton University and other leading institutions, marked an effort to expand the reach of its academic offerings to a global audience eager to sample free, noncredit versions of the course offered on Grounds. Attrition in online participation in MOOCs is common. Of the 72,781 students who initially enrolled for Green’s online course, for example, only 9,140 remained active after 10 weeks. The thousands who remained, however, spanned the globe.

http://news.virginia.edu/content/class-2013-uva-faculty-students-give-online-education-mostly-positive-grade

The first free, open, online platform for courses from multiple UK universities and other leading organisations has announced a further five partners today, including the University of Glasgow, University of Strathclyde and the British Museum. The new partners are joining FutureLearn, which was launched in December 2012 and includes several universities as well as the British Library and the British Council. Each is committed to providing engaging and entertaining courses through the online site. The University of Glasgow will initially offer two courses that are drawn from the broad base of its world class academic provision. Strathclyde will initially be offering two or more courses over the first six months of the FutureLearn programme.

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/332573/free-online-courses-multiple-uk.html

The Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing announced today that it will offer the first professional Online Master of Science degree in computer science (OMS CS) that can be earned completely through the “massive online” format. The degree will be provided in collaboration with online education leader Udacity Inc. and AT&T. All OMS CS course content will be delivered via the massive open online course (MOOC) format, with enhanced support services for students enrolled in the degree program. Those students also will pay a fraction of the cost of traditional on-campus master’s programs; total tuition for the program is initially expected to be below $7,000. A pilot program, partly supported by a generous gift from AT&T, will begin in the next academic year. Initial enrollment will be limited to a few hundred students recruited from AT&T and Georgia Tech corporate affiliates. Enrollment is expected to expand gradually over the next three years.

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/news/georgia-tech-announces-massive-online-masters-degree-computer-science

Today, one in every 88 American children is on the autism spectrum. Autism affects more than 2 million people in the U.S. and tens of millions worldwide. But it hasn’t always been this way. Statistics show a tenfold increase in autism in the past 40 years, and prevalence rates are increasing 10%-17% each year. With autism on the rise, many schools struggle to meet the needs of autistic students. Often, autistic adults do not take the next step to go on to college or meaningful employment, even though they may be incredibly gifted. Letting students fall behind should not be an option. If traditional classrooms struggle to effectively educate autistic students, what can online education offer autistic learners? Tech tools and virtual learning environments present an opportunity to better serve autistic students with flexibility and resources that are well suited to guide them in learning. The more educators learn about working with autistic students, the better equipped teachers and students will be for success.

http://www.onlineeducation.net/2013/04/05/autism-and-online-learning-a-guide-for-teachers

The blurring between traditional universities and the new “Massive Open Online Courses” reached new levels Tuesday when Georgia Tech announced it will offer what it termed a first-of-its-kind computer science degree taught entirely over an open online platform. Georgia Tech will charge about $7,000 for the master’s degree, even though the courses that lead to the degree are available to anyone for free through Udacity, a MOOC platform currently offering 26 courses taught by partners including Georgia Tech. But while students can take MOOCs for free, only accredited universities like Georgia Tech can award credit and degrees for such coursework. Georgia Tech is betting that students will happily pay $7,000 for such a credential, given that the cost of the on-campus computer science master’s, or even the current online version of that degree, runs about three times higher than that for Georgia students, and between six and seven times higher for out-of-state and international students.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/in-blurring-of-online-courses-traditional-georgia-tech-to-offer-full-open-online-masters/2013/05/14/6fed6eb2-bcea-11e2-b537-ab47f0325f7c_story.html

Yale announced on Wednesday that it would soon offer MOOCs through Coursera, the Silicon Valley-based company. Yale plans to offer four courses beginning in January, focusing on constitutional law, financial markets, morality, and Roman architecture. The move was a long time coming. Yale, which in 2007 became among the first institutions to make its course content available free on the Web with its Open Yale Courses lecture series, has taken a distinctly deliberate approach to MOOCs. Last fall it convened a faculty committee to recommend a broad online agenda that would encompass MOOCs as well as other forms of online teaching.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/yale-joins-the-mooc-club-coursera-looks-to-translate-existing-courses/43849