Update: I just received confirmation from a Coursera spokesperson that the description of facts about Coursera’s block of student access in this and my previous blog post is accurate. They cannot comment on the rest of the professor’s statement nor on Udacity and edX. Yesterday I wrote about Coursera having to block access to its […]
Blackboard seems to have cut large amount of workforce
Update: Please see new post with updated information. Update: I heard back from the company that part of the discrepancy in numbers is that public statements about employee count may have changed in whether they included the call center employees (which vary seasonally). If I can get some hard numbers from Blackboard, I will publish […]
Coursera and Udacity, but not edX, blocked in Syria and Iran
One of the most-cited aspects of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is their openness – anyone can access the courses with just Internet access and and email address. But this openness might not be valid in all countries based on recent actions. The media site Wamda, which focuses on supporting entrepreneurs in the Middle East […]
Twice as many institutions as previously reported have no online courses
Recently I pointed out that the widely-quoted Babson survey on online learning estimates 7.1 million US higher ed students taking at least one online course while the new IPEDS data indicates the number as 5.5 million. After looking deeper at the data, it appears that the difference in institutions (whether or not an institution offers any […]
New IPEDS Data: A graphical view of online ed by state and by sector
Update: I should have guessed this, but the visualizations don’t come through on RSS feeds, so you’ll need to click through to the article. Reader Mike Himmelstein has rightly pointed out that our analysis of the new IPEDS data would benefit from using visualization tools instead of just tables. This comment led me to a […]
Clarification: No, there aren’t 7.1 million students in US taking at least one online class
I’ve written several posts recently looking at the new IPEDS data on distance education (for the most part equivalent to online education). In one post I pointed out [emphasis added]: Previously, the best data available on total student counts came from the Babson Survey Research Group with their annual survey (prior to 2012 called the […]
Evolve Conference on Friday: Engaging students in the online conversation
On Friday, January 17th, I’ll be in LA to help moderate the Evolve Conference put on by the 20 Million Minds Foundation. Despite all the talk about the role of online education in higher ed, most conferences and events – GSV Education Innovation Summit, EDUCAUSE, WCET, Sloan Consortium, and others – include institutional leaders and […]