by Michelle Rhee-Weise, Clayton Christensen Institute
It’s unfortunate that SJSU’s daring experiment was cast in the media as such an epic failure because critics of online education will be all too eager to use this as proof that online courses cannot compare to what occurs within the classroom. The sad fact is that institutions of higher education have never done an exceptional job of dealing with students underprepared for college. Remember: the Udacity trial was concurrent with edX’s pilot partnership with SJSU in which MIT course materials were being used to flip the classroom in an introductory SJSU Circuits course. Students watched the online edX materials (lectures, quizzes, virtual labs) at home and then met with SJSU lecturer Khosrow Ghadiri in the classroom to go through problem sets together. That course experienced a remarkable improvement in its pass rate, shooting upward from 55 percent to 91 percent. The blended learning environment created in the SJSU-edX pilot program was a testament to the need for personal guidance and support when it comes to working with MOOC materials.
http://www.christenseninstitute.org/try-try-again-udacity/
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