Online Learning Update

By Salman Khan, CNN

Let’s try a simple thought experiment: What if we were to separate the teaching and credentialing roles of universities? What would happen if regardless of where (or whether) you went to college, you could take rigorous, internationally recognized assessments that measured your understanding and proficiency in various fields – anything from art history to software engineering. With our hypothetical assessments – microcredentials, if you will – people could prove that they know just as much in a specific domain as those with an exclusive diploma. Even more, they wouldn’t have had to go into debt and attend university to prove it. They could prepare through textbooks, the Khan Academy or life experience. Because even name-brand diplomas give employers limited information, it would be a way for elite college graduates to differentiate themselves from their peers, to show that they have retained deep, useful knowledge. In short, it would make the credential that most students and parents need cheaper (since it is an assessment that is not predicated on seat time in lecture halls) and more powerful – it would tell employers who is best ready to contribute at their organizations based on metrics that they find important. College would become optional even for students pursuing prestigious and selective career tracks.

http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/04/my-view-the-future-of-credentials/

By Angela Chen, Chronicle of Higher Ed

As more and more courses are offered free to anyone with an Internet connection, some American professors have developed a huge following abroad, particularly in China. Another such scholar is Mi­chael J. San­del, a Harvard University professor whose highly popular po­lit­i­cal-phi­los­o­phy course “Justice” was the first Harvard course to be offered free online. He and Mr. Kagan are among the most rec­og­niz­able Amer­i­can pro­fes­sors in China, says Cici Yue, a grad­u­at­e of Nan­kai University, in Tian­jin, and the Chi­nese Academy of Sciences. The courses are wide­ly ac­ces­si­ble there, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter be­ing sub­ti­tled in Man­da­rin by a group of stu­dent vol­un­teers.

http://chronicle.com/article/Open-Courses-From-America-Find/134660/

By Alisha Azevedo, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Online education was going to revolutionize the University of California system, drawing thousands to the selective institution’s online courses and bringing in new revenue to help allay budget cuts. That was the pitch for UC Online, started two years ago with the belief that millions in seed money could easily be raised from foundations or other private sources to get the bold effort off the ground. But UC Online now appears to be struggling, even as other highly selective colleges rush to offer their courses online at no charge (and, unlike the University of California, with no credit).

http://chronicle.com/article/UC-Online-Faces-Challenges-in/134778/

by Alan Carbery, edlibbs

The most commonly known MOOC provider, Coursera, is close to 1.5 million users! Interestingly, TIME magazine online suggests that only a fraction of users who sign up for a course actually complete it (Hmm, I’m guilty of that one!). I guess time will really tell the tale how MOOCs will play out, and how exactly they’ll impact education. But let’s for a minute imagine that they have longevity. And that things like iTunesU become more common place in education. What implications might that have for libraries, and librarians? (Might it have any?) And what about offering a MOOC looking at the area of information literacy? What about collaborating with a non-library MOOC to introduce elements of IL into “the curriculum”? As I re-read my last few questions, I’m reminding myself that these questions aren’t new to libraries or librarians, but the format, or delivery, has obviously changed. So whether the MOOC continues to grow, or whether something new comes along, I’m sure we’ll continue to try and see how the library fits into the model.

http://edlibbs.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/the-library-the-librarian-and-the-mooc/

by Education News

Since the year 2000, when Ohio’s online school opened its virtual doors for the first time, the number of students who take classes entirely over the internet has grown twelve-fold. Today the state’s virtual academies and online charters play host to over 30,000 kids who have chosen to forgo the typical classroom environment in favor of setting their own schedule and learning from home. In the U.S. only Arizona boasts a higher number of students taking courses online full-time, according to a report by Evergreen Education Group. Last year the Cleveland Plain Dealer looked at the online school phenomenon in Ohio and discovered that every single one of the state’s 97 school districts had at least some students who chose an online approach. The enrollment numbers ranged from a “handful” in some districts to as many as 1,500 in Cleveland. About 90% of all Ohio online learners took classes from one of seven statewide online schools, while the remainder attended virtual academies with a narrower, more local focus — like the charter school operating in Akron that boasts a student body of 1,000 area students.

http://www.educationnews.org/online-schools/ohios-academic-future-is-online-npr-predicts/

by Salman Khan, Slate

For each individual student, age 8 or 80, the next video would always be a personal discovery. The next set of problems and exercises would constitute a challenge that each person could approach at his or her own tempo; there would be no shame or stigma in progressing slowly, no dreaded moment when the class must move on. The archive of videos would never go away; students could review and refresh as often as necessary. And mistakes would be allowed! There’d be no fear of disappointing a teacher who is looking over one’s shoulder, of appearing dumb in front of a roomful of peers. I passionately believe that the Khan Academy is a tool that can empower at least an approximate model of what the future of education should look like—a way of combining the art of teaching with the science of presenting information and analyzing data, of delivering the clearest, most comprehensive, and most relevant curriculum at the lowest possible cost. I have many reasons for believing this, some to do with technology, some with economics. But perhaps the most compelling is the feedback we have heard from students.

http://www.slate.com/articles/video/conversations_with_slate/2012/10/salman_khan_on_the_youtube_lectures_and_teaching_tools_that_power_the_khan_academy_s_mission_to_revolutionize_education_video_.html

By ELENA SPARGER Staff Reporter, Purdue Exponent

Acting president Tim Sands introduced a discussion on online learning on Tuesday, revealing that federal support for research at the University is down, a loss that the University plans to recover with revenues from online courses. Sands said that federal support has dropped 26 percent, and awards are down 24 percent overall. The event in Fowler Hall was attended by about 150 of the University’s faculty and staff members. It was paneled by Dale Harris from the College of Engineering Timothy Newby from the College of Education Ananth Iyer, associate dean of graduate studies from the School of Management, and Mary Sadowski, dean of Purdue’s extended campus. “We’ve got to find other ways to find the revenue to replace what has been essentially lost from the state,” Sands said. According to Sands and the panelists, online courses are a viable option for creating a source of revenue for the University without creating too much in expenditures.

http://www.purdueexponent.org/campus/article_af22e2a0-0617-5a32-a73c-a8f81c6693a5.html

by Michael Sandel, edudemic

One of the biggest problems many people have with Khan Academy and YouTube Edu is simply the format. It’s not the fault of Khan or YouTube … it’s just that the passive video format is just that. It’s passive. Khan and others are introducing more interactive technology that acts as an added level of learning to the lessons but no one has nailed it quite yet. A San Francisco-based startup called Net Power & Light Inc. wants to change that. And they’re working with one of the most popular (in terms of YouTube views at least) Harvard professors to show off what they can do. Net and Professor Michael Sandel have partnered to offer a more interactive way to learn using the Apple iPad.

http://edudemic.com/2012/10/net-power-sandel-ipad-app/

By BRAD TUTTLE, Time

By the time the seventh e-mail about coursework and assignments arrives in my in-box, the guilt is too much to take. The online class I signed up for started on Sept. 17, and as the unopened emails pile up from Coursera, I haven’t watched a single lecture or done any work. But hey, having the flexibility to take in lectures at whatever pace you please is one of the attractions of such courses. The fact they’re free is another. In any event, it’s time to buckle down. Everyone in higher education is obsessed with MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) these days, and taking one sounded like a good idea. Whenever the local community college mails out the latest list of classes that are open to the public, I always find something that is not only interesting but also somehow “good” for me—maybe Woodworking, Web Design Basics, or Advanced Gardening. I should take that, I find myself saying.

http://nation.time.com/2012/10/02/mooc-brigade-with-free-online-classes-guilt-is-part-of-the-bargain/

by Harvard University

Harvard has produced online courses and other forms of digital learning for several decades with the goal of making educational content available to a global audience. On this page, you will find links to a selection of Harvard’s publicly available online learning content. Experience courses, public lectures, and other unique examples of Harvard’s learning content on the web.

http://www.harvard.edu/resources-offices/online-learning

By Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Can community-college students benefit from a new form of hybrid learning, based on a mix of local instruction and edX content? Can colleges tap alumni as teaching volunteers? Can labs be reinvented in the style of online video games? EdX and its collaborators are developing tools and teaching models to answer those questions. And they view the project as a means to study even deeper problems, like understanding how people forget—and creating strategies to prevent it. “It’s a live laboratory for studying how people learn, how the mind works, and how to improve education, both residential and online,” says Piotr Mitros, edX’s chief scientist.

http://chronicle.com/article/5-Ways-That-edX-Could-Change/134672/

by Jason Carr, Wired Cosmos

The great thing about distance learning for personal enrichment activities is that you can choose the level to which you want to commit yourself. You may find classes offered through prestigious universities that come with an equally prestigious charge per credit. You are just as likely to find a course offering at a minimal charge or even at no cost to you. You can simply audit a class just to get an overview of a subject you’re interested in or you can devote time and money to deep diving into a subject to the extent that you become somewhat of an expert in your own right. When you’re doing it for yourself, the choices and the commitments are yours alone. Personal enrichment isn’t just about what distance learning and the Internet can do for you. It can also be about what you can give back to the world around you.

http://wiredcosmos.com/2012/10/03/distance-learning-for-personal-enrichment/

by Virtual College (UK)

The University of New Mexico (UNM) has reported a dramatic increase in student enrolment in online courses over the past year. It has seen almost a 50 per cent rise in applications for online modules, with the total number of credit hours taken on now reaching 30,728. By the end of the academic year in May, UNM has estimated students will have taken 78,000 online credit hours. According to the university’s leaders, the figures reveal that the UNM is becoming more accessible to distance learners and the number of enrolments could increase to 134,784 by the end of the 2015-2016 school year. Jeronimo Dominguez, vice-provost for UNM’s Extended University, said online learning adds a better dimension for students to plan their academic life. “It allows them the kind of convenience and flexibility…to still take the courses that in the past have not been available to them,” he added.

http://www.virtual-college.co.uk/news/University-of-Mexico-sees-increase-in-online-learning-enrolment-newsitems-801461506.aspx

by virtual college (UK)

The number of students enrolling in online education at Ohio’s virtual schools has exceeded 30,000. Currently, 12 times as many pupils choose to do their lessons by computer – often at home – as they did when the first school was launched in 2001, submitting tests or assignments for teachers to review online. Around 90 per cent of Ohio pupils to have enrolled in the programmes attend one of the state’s seven online schools, which are independently operated by funded by the public. Gary Miron, co-author of national studies about online schools and their operators for the National Education Policy Centre, stated that Ohio may have more online schooling available in comparison with other states because of its more relaxed approach. He said that considerations such as financial reporting, student-to-teacher ratios and state tests do not feature quite so heavily in Ohio’s requirements for online educational institutions.

http://www.virtual-college.co.uk/news/Online-learning-in-Ohio-continues-to-thrive-newsitems-801460659.aspx

 by Emily Aronson, Princeton University

Historian Jeremy Adelman is spending this fall teaching “A History of the World since 1300” to more than 50 students at Princeton University — and 80,000 students across the globe. Adelman is among seven professors debuting classes on the educational website Coursera as the University explores online technology to enhance learning at Princeton and extend its educational resources beyond campus. “We can learn a lot from experiments in online learning, not just about the potential and limits of the online medium itself, but also about the practice of teaching more generally,” Provost Christopher Eisgruber said following the launch of Princeton’s first massive open online course (MOOC) this summer.

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S34/91/85O26/index.xml?section=topstories

By Adriana Lee, TechnoBuffalo

Google has thrown its weight behind Khan Academy, partnering with it in a new competition to discover “educational YouTube stars.” The initiative seeks “10 super talented and engaging content creators” to become Next EDU Gurus, who will benefit from training and promotion, plus receive a $1,000 B&H gift card for video equipment.

From the official announcement:

Do you set historical events to music? Doodle your geometry? Sing your Shakespeare? We’re looking for content creators who create all kinds of curriculum-related videos, from grammar to geography, history to histograms. You can submit any style of video as long as it’s educational and family-friendly–just bear in mind that we’re looking for content creators who can take people on a journey through a topic, so if you could imagine making ten, twenty, or fifty more videos on the topic in the future, all the better!

http://www.technobuffalo.com/companies/google/google-partners-with-khan-academy-to-find-educational-youtube-stars/

by Stephen Robert Morse, the Atlantic

Some Courserians (as they have been dubbed) who take their work quite seriously: Coursera Meetup.com groups have formed around the world, catering to thousands of people who wish to organize in-person study groups and discuss course work face to face to enhance their online experiences. Jeremy Caplan, director of education for the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism in New York said, “I’m eager to explore various platforms to find the best ways to teach entrepreneurial and digital journalism. I’m a big fan of Coursera, but I’m also eager to see innovation in course delivery over other platforms.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/sponsored/bank-of-america/archive/2012/09/what-will-the-future-bring-for-coursera-and-online-learning/262803

by John Ebersole, Forbes

I bring up these examples not to argue that online education is perfect – but rather to underscore its immense progress and the innovations that have both occurred and will continue to occur over the decades to come. Online education isn’t what it was thirty years ago. Heck, it isn’t what it was three years ago. I can’t wait to see where it will be a decade from now, though MOOCs provide a glimpse.We may not be there yet, but to contemporary critics I’ll just say: “You’ll see.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnebersole/2012/09/24/online-learning-maturing-perhaps-improving-always/

By Ray Schroeder, Evolllution

Three seemingly disconnected announcements in September are key indicators of the future of Massive Open Online Courses. The quiet announcement that Google’s first MOOC – Power Searching with Google – is “an experimental early step for us in the world of online education… an indication of our future direction.” This announcement hints at the expanded involvement of Google in offering online learning. Colorado State’s announcement that they will grant transfer credit for a Udacity class (upon successful completion and an $89 exam administered by Pearson VUE). And, the analysis by Moody’s Investment Services about the future impact of MOOCs on higher education.

http://www.evolllution.com/featured/reading-the-mooc-tea-leaves/

BY KORAN ADDO, the Advocate

In the sometimes slow-moving world of higher education, Louisiana’s college leaders know they need to get in line with the expectations of their tech-savvy, fast-moving student clientele. Getting in line these days means getting online. A 2011 Sloan Foundation Survey found that more than 6 million people, or nearly one-third of all college students, are taking at least one online course on their way to a degree. Louisiana’s four-year public colleges are responding by ramping up both their online course offerings and their online degree programs with varying degrees of success.

http://theadvocate.com/home/3952894-125/interestin-onlinecoursesgrowing

By Daphne Koller, Special to CNN

One of the greatest opportunities of this technology, one that is yet untapped, is the window that it opens into understanding human learning. The data that one can measure is unprecedented in both the level of detail and in its scale. Thus, we can apply data analytics in entirely new ways to understand what works and what doesn’t, ranging from general educational strategies to specific design choices for a given course. This transformation from a hypothesis-driven to a data-driven mode has revolutionized other disciplines, such as biology, and may now allow us to systematically improve the quality of education. This paradigm, which combines meaningful work that can be graded at scale with peer-teaching among students, allows us to offer some of our best educational content to students around the world, at a negligible marginal cost of pennies per student. It therefore makes feasible the notion of universal education, with the potential of some remarkable consequence.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/23/opinion/koller-online-college-courses/index.html