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+ - Universities should outsource to Taco Bell, but maybe not to edX

Submitted by lpress
lpress writes "MOOCs are controversial. University faculty generally hate them — for legitimate and not-so-legitimate reasons. University administrators and state legislatures tend to love them — the silver bullet that will ease the cost of education. The California State University System administration and legislature seem to be firmly in the latter camp. San Jose State University is leading the charge, first using MOOCs in "flipped" classes and now experimenting with MOOCs for credit. MOOCs will be a source of innovation, but teaching is a core function of a university, which should be outsourced with caution. Ameherst has taken a more prudent course than San Jose State — saying "no" to offering edX courses, but experimenting on their own."

+ - Amherst College says "no" to edX, but how about Google MOOCs?

Submitted by lpress
lpress writes "The Amherst College faculty voted against joining edX, deciding instead to explore online teaching on their own, independent of the major MOOC providers. One option for Amherst is to experiment with an open source MOOC platform. Better yet, what if Google (or someone else) would offer a MOOC platform as a service that is open to anyone. Google is in a good position to do this. They have their own open source MOOC platform, Course Builder and they have the experience and infrastructure needed to offer large scale services like Gmail and Google Docs. If Google were to offer a MOOC service, Google MOOCs, teachers at Amherst could use it for MOOCs or to supplement or flip classes. Think of it as YouTube for classes."
The Internet

+ - Carna, a benign Internet census botnet

Submitted by
lpress
lpress writes "All botnets are evil, right? Not Carna. It crawled the Internet ethically without doing harm and gathered a ton of interesting data. For example, Carna counted pingable IP addresses, those behind firewalls and those with reverse DNS records, for a total of 1.3 IP addresses in use. The anonymous author has also posted a description of the Carna methodology and results. There are also maps and dynamic graphics and all the data is available for download."
Education

+ - California and the Obama administration want higher education reform

Submitted by
lpress
lpress writes "In 1960, California governor Pat Brown presided over the establishment of a master plan for higher education that has guided the state for over 40 years. His son, now governor, Jerry Brown may be working toward higher education reform for the Internet era. California has an open textbook program, is experimenting with giving credit for MOOCs and is considering a bill that would require state colleges and universities to give credit for faculty-approved online courses taken by students unable to register for oversubscribed classes on campus. The Obama administration seems to be on the same page, calling for revision of the federal student aid system, allowing for new measures of value and new system of accreditation."

Comment: The situation is a lot worse in developing naitons (Score 1) 222

by lpress (#43096591) Attached to: 'Bandwidth Divide' Could Bar Some From Free Online Courses
If you think cost and access are problems in poor and rural parts of the US, consider the plight of people in developing nations. The potential for online education is great: http://cis471.blogspot.com/2012/05/online-education-market-is-global.html but sufficiently cheap, fast access typically non-existent: http://cis471.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-access-and-bandwidth-divide-in.html
Education

+ - Columbia University study slams traditional online classes

Submitted by
lpress
lpress writes "A Columbia University study of the efficacy of "traditional online classes" concluded that “the online format had a significantly negative relationship with both course persistence and course grade, indicating that the typical student had difficulty adapting to online courses.”

A review of the study reports that online results were poor across the board, but there the results were not homogeneous. For example “males, Black students, and students with lower levels of academic preparation experienced significantly stronger negative coefficients for online learning compared with their counterparts". Some courses — social science and professional school classes — also fared poorly online.

The study concludes with four policy recommendations to cope with the problems they found, but only one — wholesale improvement of courses seems viable and we may be learning how to do that in MOOCs."
Education

+ - Bullish on MOOCs at the Davos World Economic Forum

Submitted by
lpress
lpress writes "MOOCs and online education were major topics of discussion at the just concluded Davos World Economic Forum.

One of the stars was 12 year old Khadija Niazi from Lahore, Pakistan, who completed the Stanford artificial intelligence MOOC when she was 11 and has taken Udacity and Coursera courses subsequently.

She participated in a Davos roundtable discussion entitled "RevolutiOnline.edu — Online Education Changing the World" along with Bill Gates, Jimmy Wales, Thomas Friedman and stars of the MOOC world.

The presidents of Harvard, Stanford and MIT all acknowledged that the experiments in new models of online learning will soon radically disrupt higher learning. Online education is a global market and Russian, British and Chinese universities were also at Davos.

Ms. Niazi's story reminds me of the story of the young mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, who rose to fame after writing Professor G.H. Hardy at Cambridge from his village in Southern India. His first two letters to Hardy are said to have been returned unopened — tomorrow's Ramanujan will have an easier time of it. How many Ramanujans will we find enrolled online and what will be their contribution to humanity?"
Politics

+ - Republican Study Committee puts its foot in its mouth

Submitted by
lpress
lpress writes "The Republican Study Committee, chaired by Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, published a well reasoned critique of the copyright and patent systems, then quickly withdrew it. But Loren Weinstein published a copy on his excellent blog, so we can all see what Representative Jordan had to say and how quickly he retracted it. A lesson for him on the way the Internet works and a lesson for us on the way politics works."

Comment: NY data centers could have learned from Katrina (Score 1) 162

by lpress (#41870167) Attached to: NYC Data Center Needs Focus On Fuel
> "Who knew that the most critical element of operating a data center in New York City was ensuring a steady supply of diesel fuel? Anyone who paid attention to what happened to data centers when Katrina hit New Orleans. Check the Clay Shirky interview linked to in this post: http://cis471.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-internet-damage-caused-by-hurricane.html
Education

+ - "Scale of the Universe" updates Eames' "Powers of Ten"

Submitted by
lpress
lpress writes "In 1977, famed designers Charles and Ray Eames made a film called "Powers of Ten," sponsored by IBM. It depicts the relative size of things in the universe and the effect of adding another zero. It begins with a picnic scene then zooms out to 100 million light years (10^24 meters) and back in to .000001 angstroms (10^-16 meters).

The movie was very popular at the time and it has been viewed nearly 200 million times on YouTube. It has a compelling narration and holds up well today.

But, the times they are a changing, http://cis471.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-times-they-are-changing-htwins.html.

HTwins has produced an update on the Powers of Ten theme called "Scale of the Universe Two" (Scale2). Scale2 was born digital, interactive and extensible. A slider lets the user zoom in to images of subatomic objects and out to the diameter of the known universe. Clicking on an object brings up a short text description of it (in twenty different languages).

Scale2 complements Powers of Ten. If I were teaching this material, I would have the students watch Powers of Ten then play with Scale2.

The productions of the two are as different as the results. Powers of Ten was sponsored by IBM and produced by an internationally famous design firm while Scale2 is sponsored by Google Ad Sense and was produced by 14-year old twin brothers, Cary and Michael Huang."
The Internet

+ - The Internet accounts for 5.1 million US jobs and 3.7% of GDP

Submitted by
lpress
lpress writes "A Harvard Business School study sponsored by the Interactive Advertising Bureau shows that the ad-supported Internet is responsible for 5.1 million jobs in the US — two million direct and 3.1 million indirect. They report that the Internet accounted for 3.7% of 2011 GDP.

The research, development and procurement that launched the Internet back in the 1970s and 1980s cost the US taxpayers $124.5 million at the time — not a bad investment!"

Comment: Re:Really? (Score 1) 201

by lpress (#41555457) Attached to: Brown Signs California Bill For Free Textbooks
The bill sets up a council of 9 faculty (from CSU, UC and Community Colleges) and they will be responsible for acquiring the books. If they acquire crappy books, faculty will not adopt them. If they do not offer enough to authors to entice them to produce typical ancillary material, faculty will not adopt them. The funds have not yet been allocated and I have no idea whether or not they will be sufficient to attact good, complete books. We will see. More detail at: http://cis471.blogspot.com/2012/10/governor-brown-signs-california-open_1.html.

Comment: Re:Really? (Score 1) 201

by lpress (#41545449) Attached to: Brown Signs California Bill For Free Textbooks
You are assuming that the Creative Commons textbooks will not include the same sorts of question banks, PowerPoint slides, and other extras that make them easy to use as those from commercial publishers, If that is the case, you are right -- most professors are busy and unwilling to spend extra time on teaching -- but it may not be the case. If by "incentives" you are thinking of bribes or kickbacks, you are either misinformed or paranoid.
Education

+ - Presentation scales in massive online courses; what about interaction?->

Submitted by
lpress
lpress writes "Coursera has demonstrated that they can scale presentations in massive, open, online courses — they have reached over 1.3 million students in 195 countries since they were funded in April.

But can they scale student interaction? As of this morning, 7,839 Coursera students had formed 1,119 communities on Meetup.com in 1,014 cities — many outside the US."
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