Online Learning Update

By MELISSA KORN And JENNIFER LEVITZ, Wall Street Journal

“Nobody has any idea how it’s going to work,” says Dave Cormier, manager of Web communications and innovation at the University of Prince Edward Island, who was involved in earlier iterations of MOOCs a few years ago and has been credited with coining the term in 2008. “People have ideas of how to monetize it, but simply don’t have any evidence.” Coursera, another firm with Stanford founders and $22 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and others, recently began notifying students that they can opt in to a job-placement service, where recruiters can access details of their class performance. But the company matched only a handful of students in its months-long pilot and is still determining the fee structure. While he declines to provide dollar figures, co-founder Andrew Ng acknowledges “it’s still a business model that we’re fleshing out.” MOOCs are “an innovation looking for a business model,” says Kevin Kinser, an associate professor of higher education policy at the State University of New York at Albany.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324339204578173421673664106.html?mod=rss_Education

By Katie Eder, New Jersey Business

Though Rutgers University has offered online courses to students enrolled at its three campuses for more than a decade, a new public-private partnership with educational technology company Pearson Inc. will enable the university to provide degrees entirely through online programs and extend its reach outside of New Jersey. “We’ve been growing our online enrollment between 20 (percent) and 25 percent per year, and we’re up to 15,000 enrollments this year, but we’ve done it in a bootstrap fashion. The decision to do a public-private partnership was really driven by the knowledge that if we wanted to get our online programs to scale globally and make investments to get to high quality instruction, we needed a partner,” said David Finegold, senior vice president of lifelong learning and strategic growth at Rutgers.

http://www.njbiz.com/article/20121227/NJBIZ01/121229924/Rutgers-Pearson-partner-to-expand-global-course-offerings

By Laura Diamond, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

These online courses are revolutionizing higher education as they give students free access worldwide to content and faculty offered by elite colleges. About 2 million students have signed up for the classes this year, and two Georgia colleges — Emory and Georgia Tech — are among those participating. Georgia Tech started this fall, and Emory begins in January. Colleges are on the cusp of a major transformation as they test what they can provide through advanced technology and how they can operate more efficiently. They are discussing how to provide a richer learning experience online and in traditional classrooms. “The model of higher education is changing,” said Lynn Zimmerman, Emory’s senior vice provost. “We are at the forefront of the experiment, and I don’t think anyone can predict where it will go.”

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/open-online-classes-transform-georgia-colleges/nTgLS/

by University Ventures Fund

Since establishing University Ventures nearly two years ago, we have written and spoken on many aspects of higher education and online education in particular. With nearly 15% of U.S. students enrolled in higher education studying entirely online and earning degrees without ever setting foot on campus, and with online education in the headlines and popular consciousness like never before, this holiday season we thought it would be a nice gift (to ourselves, primarily) to organize our views on the evolution of online education and its impact on higher education more broadly in a handy whitepaper format.

http://www.universityventuresfund.com/UV-Newsletter-Holiday-Edition-Whitepaper.pdf

by UMass Boston

The Center for Innovation and Excellence in eLearning (CIEE) at the University of Massachusetts Boston announced today that it will make available two massive open online courses (MOOCs) in Spring 2013. These two online courses will be open to the public, free of charge, and offered solely through the university. Philip DiSalvio, Dean of the College of Advancing and Professional Studies, announced UMass Boston’s recent initiative at a symposia “Sustainability of MOOCs in Higher Education” held on campus. CIEE is part of the College of Advancing and Professional Studies.  These online courses will provide interested learners a high quality educational experience.

http://www.umb.edu/news_events_media/news/umass_boston_to_offer_massive_open_online_courses_moocs/

by Alex Wukman, Online Courses

Udacity launched in March 2012 with two online learning classes, initially the company was funded with an investment from Charles River Ventures and $300,000 of Thrun’s personal money. However, in October 2012 venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz led a second round of investment that raised $15 million. Udacity currently offers 15 math and computer science online learning classes that are separated by skill levels, from a beginner level introduction to computer science to an advanced artificial intelligence for robotics class, and more than 750,000 registered students. Each course utilizes video lectures with closed captioning, integrated quizzes, and follow-up homework. Recently Udacity signed an agreement with online translation community Amara who will provide subtitles to 5,500 of the company’s videos.

http://www.onlinecollegecourses.com/2012/12/27/mooc-spotlight-udacity/

By LEWIS M. ANDREWS, Wall Street Journal

The technological transformation of education has wide-ranging political implications. Blended learning may not eliminate the need for classroom instructors, but it will reduce the numbers required. Over time, the reduction will significantly reduce the amount of dues raised by teachers unions—and therefore the influence of one of the most liberal constituencies within the Democrat Party. It will also reduce the manpower available at election time to canvass neighborhoods, cover phone banks and drive people to the voting booth in support of left-leaning candidates. Teachers unions nationally rebel against the demands of school reformers for more accountability. Disputed issues such as student testing, merit pay and teacher evaluations seem at first glance to have nothing to do with Internet instruction. Yet the demands for better student performance clearly pave the way for blended-learning environments involving smaller and more productive staffs. The economics of digital learning will undermine the liberal biases built into the current education system.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323353204578127142174902184.html

By Katherine Long, Seattle Times

Just a handful of students have signed up for the for-credit version of the University of Washington’s online courses, but thousands are taking them for free. UW has debated whether it makes sense to give away courses when it is having to cut other expenses because of the state’s financial woes. Now it is among the first universities to experiment with offering a more rigorous, for-credit version of a free online course, calculating that if it can get 30 to 40 students in each Coursera course to take it for credit, the classes will pay for themselves, said David Szatmary, vice provost of UW Educational Outreach. But at least so far, just a few students have shown interest in getting credit. Five people took the information-security class for credit. The low participation rate could be because the notice of the for-credit sign-up came late and was not well-advertised on the Coursera site, Szatmary said.

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2019981349_coursera25m.html

by Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution

I think it is quite possible that one hundred or more schools in the U.S. News rankings will find their enrollments or at least their tuition revenue streams cut in half or more within twenty years. They will be shells of their former selves, though on-line education might not even be their major economic challenge. It will be one of three or four major whammies facing them. Higher education as a general practice of course still will thrive, as will community colleges. One key question is whether on-line education will encourage consolidation or not. Under one vision, on-line offerings shore up the smaller schools, because you can go to them for the atmosphere while taking German III purely on-line. (Even then, they survive but the revenue stream takes a huge whack.) Under another vision, on-line — for most students — works best in hybrid form, mixed with various face-to-face forms, and the larger schools will have a much easier time getting this off the ground in a workable manner.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/12/how-many-bankruptcies-to-come-in-higher-education.html

by the Next Big What

While looking at a recently published report on trends in eCommerce by Cisco triggered a valuable question, can digital education ever be as big as eCommerce? Global eCommerce is growing at 13.5% CAGR. It is estimated to reach $1.34T by 2015. While e-commerce spending may be growing, the pace at which commerce is moving online is less rapid than music and advertising. A 2011 study by Sloan Consortium found that 6 million students in the US are taking at least one online course, nearly one third of all those enrolled in higher education. In fact, enrollments in online courses are outpacing those of higher education as whole; with 10% increase in online students between 2010 and 2011 compared to a just 2% rise overall. With this backdrop of trends and Professor Christenson’s prediction, the estimated size of 2022 global online/digital education market will stand at a $4.38 Trillion (50% of $ 4.45T growing at moderate 7% CAGR) based on market prediction by GSV Advisors.

http://www.nextbigwhat.com/digital-education-is-the-new-ecommerce-297/

by JESSIE CHUANG, Classroom Aid

The Open University has published an innovation report – Innovating Pedagogy 2012. The executive summary is as below for your preview. It’s an excellent timing to review them and plan ahead for 2013. This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. The first report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. To produce it, a group of academics at the Institute of Educational Technology in The Open University proposed a long list of new educational terms, theories, and practices. We then pared these down to ten that have the potential to provoke major shifts in educational practice, particularly in postschool education. We have not deliberately excluded school education, but that is not our area of expertise. Lastly, we drew on published and unpublished writings to compile the ten sketches of new pedagogies that might transform education. These are summarised below in rough order of immediacy and timescale to widespread implementation.

http://classroom-aid.com/2012/12/25/innovating-pedagogy-2012-from-the-open-university/

by Colorado State University

One of the many differences between online vs. traditional education are the benefits of online learning like completing your education in the comforts of your own home. Most college universities require first year students to live on campus. As an online student, you have the freedom and flexibility to control many aspects of your learning environment. You won’t have typical roommate issues or crowded study halls. The advantages of online learning are that your entire degree program can be completed wherever you have computer access. This may be at home, a local coffee shop, or while traveling the world.

http://www.online.colostate.edu/blog/posts/advantages-of-online-learning