Online Learning Update

By MEG P. BERNHARD and MARIEL A. KLEIN, Harvard Crimson

Provost Alan M. Garber ’76 reiterated the challenges of sustaining edX’s current financial model in a document released Friday and pointed to potential areas where the non-profit virtual education platform could improve, such as developing mobile platforms and accommodating students from different backgrounds. The 33-page “white paper” summarizes edX’s three-year history after its initial founding by Harvard and MIT and emphasizes the company’s three main goals: to improve on-campus learning, expand college-level course offerings to the world, and conduct research on learner behavior. Garber, though, projected that the current models for funding HarvardX—Harvard’s branch of the massive open online course provider—are unsustainable, given the high cost of generating online material and the time investment of professors producing the online courses.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/10/26/garber-edX-financial-sustainability/

by Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed

(ed note: In this thought-filled posting, Josh Kim addresses issues related to the new book. These issues are relevant much more broadly.) In Reclaiming Conversation, you make the mistake of characterizing MOOCs as interchangeable with online education. This mistake is distressingly common amongst journalists, but in a book as influential as Reclaiming Conversation I find the conflation of these two educational methods to be particularly troublesome. The only thing that MOOCs and traditional online education share is a common enabling set of technologies – the internet and the phone. MOOCs contain two attributes that put them in a separate category to traditional online learning. First, they are built for scale. Second, they are built to be open. Traditional online courses are designed neither for scale or for openness. Traditional online courses are built around a model of a private community, one consisting of an educator and a limited number of students.

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/open-letter-sherry-turkle-moocs-and-online-learning

by Lekan Oguntoyinbo, University Business

For decades, colleges and universities have used big data to track high-risk students and intervene as needed. Now a growing number of institutions are using data tools to track and analyze another group: successful students. It is a radically different approach that many campus administrators believe will help them understand what makes students successful—developing a profile of success that can be used to help keep vulnerable students focused and ensure positive outcomes for all. One example: If the most successful students use the library or computer lab frequently, interventions for at-risk students could involve strongly encouraging them to take advantage of these resources.

http://www.universitybusiness.com/article/colleges-study-successful-students

by Adam Gordon, Forbes

The University of Michigan Ross School of Business on October 12 announced free lifetime open-enrolment executive education for all its degree alumni, a business model inflection that raises interesting issues in strategic cannibalization, and which threatens the status quo of both MBA and wider short-course leadership development industries. The “Alumni Advantage” offer means UM graduates have lifelong free access to executive education, in Ann Arbor, in Hong Kong, Malaysia, India, and online. Non-Ross UM alumni are eligible for half-price.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamgordon/2015/10/24/michigan-ross/

by Ryan Craig, Forbes

There are two critical science projects underway in higher education. First and most important is figuring out how to use technology to significantly improve developmental/remedial education. This is related to about a thousand things currently happening in K-12 education. The answer will undoubtedly involve adaptive learning and gamification, and perhaps immersive learning as well. This science project is at the top of everybody’s list. The second science project, and the one I spend a lot of time thinking about, is how to use technology to develop and deliver shorter, less expensive, 100% digital (and therefore accessible) postsecondary programs that lead to credentials that employers will recognize and value. The answer – if there is one – will be critical to the future of colleges and universities. One might go as far to say that whoever solves this science project merits a badge. Two high-profile companies are pursuing a badge-based future: Coursera and Udacity.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryancraig/2015/09/30/coursera-udacity-and-the-future-of-credentials/

by Ilya Pozin, Forbes

Many of the world’s top universities have embraced Massive Open Online Courses (known as MOOCs). In some districts, tablets have become an essential school supply, thanks to new software that turns them into powerful classroom tools. Meanwhile, the implementation of computer-administered common core testing forced many schools to modernize, whether they wanted to or not. The technology behind these innovations has come from a host of companies, ranging from billion-dollar tech unicorns to small outfits founded by school teachers. What unites them is their shared vision that education, one of the industries most resistant to change, can benefit from technological innovation. Together, they have coalesced into a sector known as EdTech, which has become one of the hottest spaces in Silicon Valley and beyond.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ilyapozin/2015/10/25/driving-innovation-10-edtech-companies-you-need-to-know-about/