Online Learning Update

by GREGORY FERENSTEIN, Tech Crunch

The largest university system in America is aggressively expanding its experimental foray into Massive Online Open Learning (MOOCs), based on an unusually promising pilot course. The California State University system will offer a special “flipped” version of an electrical engineering course at 11 more universities, where students watch online lectures from Harvard and MIT at home, while class time is devoted to hands-on problem solving. A San Jose State University pilot found that the flipped class increased pass rates a whopping 46%, which university President Mohammad Qayoumi believes is enough to move full-steam ahead.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/12/california-universities-aggressively-expand-online-courses-finds-failure-rates-drop/

by TIM DODD, Australian Financial Review

A University of NSW spin-off company, Smart Sparrow, will this week launch a new e-learning product which goes a step beyond the popular massive open online courses, or MOOCs. “A MOOC is a way to give a massive audience a similar experience, similar to a lecture,” said Smart Sparrow chief executive Dror Ben-Naim. “Smart Sparrow is a bit more like the private tutor. It’s like personalised learning at scale.” While MOOCs offer online learning in a linear fashion – usually with short videos each followed by a multiple choice quiz to ensure the student has understood the concept before moving on – Smart Sparrow’s technical platform offers adaptive e-learning. This means students are free to explore for themselves and learn by doing. They may play with chemicals in a virtual chemistry lab, test different engineering structures or learn about a physical concept with an interactive moving diagram. The platform also gives instructors and course designers the opportunity to target learning for individual students and give students more creative tasks.

http://www.afr.com/p/national/education/taking_the_next_step_beyond_moocs_YOp1faaL3PDE6ziDzTt97O

by Ki Mae Heussner, GigaOM

Online learning site Udemy is launching a corporate training option that enables companies to create private online learning sites for their employees. Ambitious individuals who want to bulk up on new skills can turn to online learning site Udemy for lessons on everything from web development and programming to accounting and entrepreneurship. And it might not be long before their employers start picking up the tab.

http://gigaom.com/2013/04/12/udemy-adds-revenue-stream-with-private-online-learning-sites-for-companies/

The session focused on the report:  Advancing Access through Regulatory Reform: Findings, Principles, and Recommendations for the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement (SARA) that was recently released by the Commission on the Regulation on Postsecondary Distance Education.   The Commission, which is a committee formed by APLU (the land-grant universities) and the State Higher Education Executive Officers, built upon the work of previous efforts of the Presidents’ Forum/Council of State Governments and the regional higher education compacts.  You can see a short history of state authorization and the reciprocity efforts on our web page. Sponsored by Lumina Foundation, the meeting attendees included representatives from 47 states.   Delaware, Hawaii, and New York were not represented.  While they did not send participants, we know that there was interest in the first two of those states in participating. Others in attendance to this invitational event included those who had involvement in shaping the reciprocity language.

http://wcetblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/highlights-from-the-national-meeting-on-state-authorization-reciprocity/

by Small Business Wire

Advances in educational technology have allowed universities worldwide to create dynamic online learning environments containing an engaging mix of streaming video lectures, podcasts, webcasts, interactive discussion boards, and multimedia activities. These new online courses emphasize flexibility and are adaptable to a variety of individual learning styles. Additionally, the new “anytime, anywhere” learning environment fostered by online education is ideal for working professionals balancing families, work responsibilities, and increasing economic demands. In addition, students in online certificate programs may not feel comfortable expressing their views in a traditional classroom environment, but they now have a voice in interactive discussion forums with increased direct access to instructors and subject matter experts.

http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/the-rise-of-online-learning-in-higher-education-236181.htm

By Sidney Van Wyk, the Washington Times

Seeking to bring more order to the exploding world of online college course work, state education officials and leading educational organizations Thursday released a proposal designed to speed up the expansion of “distance learning” while offering greater consumer protections for students. The voluntary national plan would set a baseline of regulations for the quality of online classes among the states, as well as create a complaint system for distance learners from outside of the state where the institution offering the class is located. The report containing the proposed compact was released by the Commission on the Regulation of Postsecondary Distance Education, with a diverse group of leaders within the postsecondary education community, including Richard Riley, who was education secretary under President Clinton.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/11/panel-wants-to-end-confusion-over-online-learning-/

by David Coronado, Diverse Ed

When people find out that I’m completing my degree online, I generally receive the following question, “Why online?” Needless to say, online education is really accommodating to my schedule. I also enjoy the format and the class selection. At my private nonprofit university, I have a huge selection of classes, in eight-week increments—I never worried about classes filling up, and course availability is never an issue. Classes are very structured and organized, yet very challenging. The challenging part of online classes is that you must be a self-directed learner and motivated to finish. I take two, eight-week classes, simultaneously, and then I take another two within the second half of the semester; this allows for me to gain my full-time status. I study long hours each night—in fact, sometimes longer than I did when I was in my traditional setting. Ultimately, the autonomy of online classes is a great fit for someone who is motivated, doesn’t have the privilege of attending a brick-and-mortar school, and enjoys the opportunity to fulfill a life-long desire to finish their degree.

http://diverseeducation.com/article/52546/

By Raja Bobbili & Daniel Doktori, Bloomberg

Elite universities recognize online courses as a way to educate the masses. Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology teamed up to introduce the nonprofit edX in May 2012, and Stanford, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania and University of Michigan were quick to sign on to Coursera Inc., a for-profit platform, which now offers more than 300 free courses. We think these top institutions are missing a chance to use the Web to reinvigorate stagnated teaching methods within their own graduate and professional schools, most notably their law schools. Case study: Harvard Law School, where we are both students.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-11/harvard-law-school-can-learn-from-moocs.html

by Michael Fitzgerald, Information Week

California will expand its experiment in blended online and real-world classes after a successful pilot between San Jose State University (SJSU) and edX, the Harvard/MIT-led consortium for online classes. Blended classes bring massive open online courses, or MOOCs, to physical classrooms. San Jose State piloted an introductory engineering class where students watched an edX class on circuits and electronics, MITx 6.002x, and came to physical classes to work on course-related activities such as quizzes and collaborative work. Students who passed received full credit and did not pay extra for the blended course. The course saw much higher pass rates than traditional courses at SJSU in the same subject.

http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/california-expands-use-of-moocs/240152703

By Maegan Vazquez, NYU Local

If you thought your professors were tough paper critics, just wait for EdX’s newly unveiled online essay grader software, which instantly grades student essays and short exam answers seconds after you press send. The software is part of a nonprofit platform founded by Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and offers online classes from top tier universities to students around the world and has been hailed as the “Linux of online learning.” EdX is also giving high school students the chance to take online courses at Ivy Leagues. How does the technology ‘learn’ to grade? The tool asks a human to grade 100 essays or short written answers. Then, it becomes trained on the human’s grading method and grades other essays accordingly. The method will provide general feedback to tell a student whether they’re on-topic or not. It will also allow students to rewrite and resubmit their essays an unlimited amount of times.

http://nyulocal.com/national/2013/04/09/robot-graded-essays-the-educational-wave-of-the-not-so-distant-future/

by Ry Rivard, Inside Higher Ed

Coursera, the increasingly popular provider of free online courses, is beginning to make money. The Silicon Valley-based company brought in $220,000 in the first quarter after it started charging for verified completion certificates, its co-founders said. The company also receives revenue from an Amazon.com affiliates program if users buy books suggested by professors. “It’s the beginning of revenue,” said a Coursera co-founder, Daphne Koller.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/04/08/coursera-begins-make-money

by Akshat Rathi, ars technica

Karl Szpunar, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard University, might have a rather simple solution to rein in distractions, one that focuses attention in real-world classrooms: intersperse pop quizzes into the online lectures. Szpunar got this idea from a 2008 study he conducted. In it, students learned five lists of words; half the students were tested after each list and the other half were tested only after the fifth list. Both groups were then tested on the cumulative list of words. Those tested after every list, not surprisingly, performed better on the cumulative test. But the results also suggested that being continually quizzed helped focus the students on the task at hand. Both groups had the same gap between seeing the fifth set of words and being tested on them, yet the group that was tested along the way performed twice as well on this set. Regular quizzes limit mind-wandering, increase note-taking, and cut exam anxiety.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/testing-students-during-video-lectures-improves-learning/

By Stephen Shiflett, Centre Daily

Penn State professors leading the university’s first massive open online courses — known as MOOCs — are using creative new teaching methods and have high hopes for this phenomenon in higher education. Still, these five classes are so new that many of the instructors remain unsure what to expect. MOOCs are free, online classes that are not eligible for college credit but are open to anyone. Thousands can enroll in a single course at one time.

http://www.centredaily.com/2013/04/06/3569603/penn-state-professors-excited.html

by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha, Mint & Wall Street Journal

The relative merits of classroom teaching versus online instruction are something for experts in pedagogy to argue about. But the ability to watch a Yale class in game theory or a Harvard class in ethics while sitting in front of a computer thousands of miles away is an opportunity that wasn’t available to most people till recently. At a more prosaic level, some science tutors in Mumbai complement their class lectures with short revision modules that they load on to the mobile phones of their students, who can then play them at any place, say, a city bus. There are early signs that Indian students are quickly adapting to online education, perhaps since it offers them an escape from the current mediocrity in the university system. Two recent stories in the Financial Times and Nature said India is the second biggest source of students for two large online initiatives—edX and Coursera. In fact, the Financial Times report mentioned the case of Amol Bhave, a 17-year-old from Jabalpur, who got admission into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), US, thanks to his excellent performance in an online course on edX, which is backed by MIT and Harvard.

http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/jSZYBLnbWbbRkxjsTuv1aP/Are-we-ready-to-tap-into-the-virtual-classroom.html

by Khan Academy

Khan Academy, in collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Association of American Medical Colleges, is looking for the next generation of medical educators. We are launching a competition to produce the best medical and pre-health video lessons and accompanying questions. Winners will receive an all-expenses paid 1-week trip (July 14-21) to get face-to-face training and support from Khan Academy to help us develop an open access, free resource for students and faculty in the health professions. Winners may then be invited to become Khan Academy Fellows to work with Khan Academy on developing the next generation of medical education content! Submissions due by June 14, 2013 at 11:59pm PST.

https://www.khanacademy.org/about/med-competition

by Doresa Banning, City Town

EdX, which provides a platform for massive open online courses (or MOOCs), recently waded into the fray surrounding automated grading systems by introducing software that employs artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short written answers and provide an immediate assessment, The New York Times reported. The nonprofit organization, founded by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is making the tool available for free via the Internet to colleges and other institutions to use. Perhaps not surprisingly, the technology, while not altogether new, has already garnered controversy.

http://www.citytowninfo.com/career-and-education-news/articles/edx-creates-an-automated-essay-grading-system-available-to-the-public-13040502

By Alexandra M. Pickett, Quartz

A very wise old online professor, Bill Pelz, once told me that the lecture is the most efficient way to pass important concepts and theories from the professor’s notepad to the student’s iPad without going through either brain. So, I am very curious. Why do students fail to engage in discussions/interactions? What went wrong in the discussion activity? We need to think about this from students’ perspective. I think there are a lot of boring professors out there who would much rather blame the internet for the lack of attention of their students, than turn a critical eye on themselves to ask: How do I engage my students? How relevant am I to my students?

http://qz.com/68962/if-online-students-arent-engaged-its-the-teachers-fault/

by Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed

Adaptive learning is hot. The technology, loosely defined as data-driven tools that can help professors mold coursework around individual students’ abilities, is developing at a dizzying pace. And colleges have been hard-pressed to keep up with the mishmash of adaptive offerings from emerging firms. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is trying to lend a hand. Foundation representatives believe adaptive learning has plenty of potential, both to help more students earn a college credential and to do so more efficiently. So the foundation footed the bill to bring together leaders from a group of a dozen relatively tech-savvy colleges and two associations to share information. Related to the group’s work is a new report that tracks adaptive vendors and what their various offerings can and can’t do. Funded by Gates, the study released this week by Education Growth Advisors analyzed more than 70 adaptive learning companies with an eye toward helping college leaders decide which, if any, of those approaches might be worth adopting for their particular institution’s needs.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/04/04/gates-foundation-helps-colleges-keep-tabs-adaptive-learning-technology

By: Maryellen Weimer, Faculty Focus

Carolyn Hart has completed an integrative review of the research literature in the hopes of identifying those factors that positively affect a student’s persistence in an online course. Do we know what differentiates students who complete online courses from those who drop out?  Her review is based on 20 studies published since 1999. She found that researchers used a wide range of definitions for persistence. She opted for this straightforward description: persistence is “the ability to complete an online course despite obstacles or adverse circumstances.” (p. 30) The opposite of persistence is attrition, which she defined as “withdrawal from an online course.” (p. 30) Based on her review, she identified the following factors as being related to student persistence in online courses.

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/student-persistence-in-online-courses-understanding-the-key-factors/

By Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Most students who register for a MOOC have no intention of completing the course, said the company’s co-founders, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng. “Their intent is to explore, find out something about the content, and move on to something else,” said Ms. Koller. The rates of completion for students who have given some indication that they plan to do the work is substantially higher. For example, for students who so much as submit the first assignment, the completion rate leaps to 45 percent. For students who are paying $50 for the company’s new Signature Track program—which includes features designed as safeguards against identity fraud and cheating on examinations—the pass rates are even higher, at about 70 percent, Ms. Koller said. That is even higher, she said, than the non-Signature Track students who profess in surveys to high levels of commitment to completing the course. This “suggests that having skin in the game is highly valuable,” Ms. Koller said.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/coursera-takes-a-nuanced-view-of-mooc-dropout-rates/43341?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

by Nick Anderson, The Washington Post

The online education company known as Coursera has racked up gaudy numbers within a year of its launch: 3.1 million users from around the world have signed up for an ever-expanding menu of courses offered for free from 62 leading colleges and universities. On Friday, hundreds of educators from those schools gathered at the University of Pennsylvania to take stock of a movement that is transforming higher education. Some participants in the massive open online courses, known as MOOCs, wonder whether the phenomenon is oversold. Some said it is improving teaching on campus. And many marveled at the sudden global reach of their work. James Green, a University of Maryland senior lecturer who taught one of the university’s first MOOCs this year, said the six-week course on developing innovative ideas for new companies drew 87,900 students.

http://azstarnet.com/news/national/online-educators-take-stock-explore-how-to-earn-revenue/article_722d35ca-7595-5140-a09f-3d9daa7a67d3.html