Back in late July we found out that San Jose State University was pausing their SJSU Plus pilot program using Udacity for-credit MOOCs due to low passing rates. While there was fairly extensive media coverage of the story broken by Inside Higher Ed, there was the promise of a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded research […]
Some validation of MOOC student patterns graphic
File this under “you read it first on e-Literate”. In previous posts from spring 2013 I provided a graphical view on MOOC student patterns based on observed retention over time as well as differing student types. This graphic was based on anecdotal observations of multiple MOOCs, mostly through Coursera. Based on a recent study of […]
What does Devlin Daley’s departure mean for Instructure?
Despite all the media hype on MOOCs over the past two years, perhaps the most important recent market entry for ed tech has been Canvas, the LMS from Instructure. Instructure was founded in 2008 by Brian Whitmer and Devlin Daley. At the time Brian and Devlin were graduate students at BYU who had just taken […]
SJSU Plus Udacity Pilots: Lack of transparency in describing data
Alternate Headline: “Our Long National Nightmare is Over – SJSU and Udacity solve problem of college graduates being able to pass remedial math” The more I read on SJSU’s announcement on the pilot program, the more troubled I am with the lack of clear description of student population change (I wrote briefly about the change in student […]
SJSU Plus / Udacity Update: Different student populations
San Jose State University (SJSU) and Udacity have announced the results of their summer pilot, and the headlines cover the big improvements (text from IHE article, table from Udacity blog). Thrun recently hinted that the summer pilot’s results would be more positive, and that Udacity was getting close to finding the “magic formula” to deliver […]
Cal State’s New Online Concurrent Enrollment Program: A Student’s View
Michael and I have written about California’s efforts to leverage online education to address the challenge of students having access to needed courses, but it would help to hear what students have to say. Towards that end, I am sharing a student newspaper article about Cal State’s new online concurrent enrollment program. The student is […]
Postscript on accreditation transparency: Basic financials of two accrediting commissions
Last week I wrote a post on two significant accrediting actions related to City College of San Francisco and Tiffin University. If there really is a shift in the DOE’s views on accreditation or in the accrediting commissions’ interpretation of standards, then that could have fairly profound cascade effects on competency-based learning programs, private online […]