It was two years ago, give or take a week, that the MOOC mania started. Think about the effects on higher education of this seminal event and how short a time it has been. In the past two years online education and ed tech have moved into the front pages, being discussed in the front […]
New Post at WCET: Update on California Online Initiatives
I have a new post up at WCET with updates on the California Online Initiatives driven by state government, including today’s news that SB520 is on hold. The big news today is that the controversial bill seeking to allow for-credit partially-outsourced online education in California has been put on hold until at least 2014. [snip] […]
ELI Podcast: Emerging Issues Around MOOCs
Michael and I were interviewed by Veronica Diaz for the EDUCAUSE Learning Institute (ELI) podcast series. The theme was looking not at where MOOCs are today, but at where MOOCs might go in the future. The interview is about 13 minutes in length and covers questions such as: Coursera just raised $43m of funding – […]
SJSU and Udacity: The Obvious Problems and Value of Report
SJSU has announced via an official blog post that they are studying the results of the SJSU Plus program using Udacity. First, news coverage and much commentary have been based on very preliminary and unanalyzed data from a spring 2013 pilot of three SJSU Plus courses with Udacity. We are currently awaiting a more comprehensive […]
SJSU and Udacity: Poor Planning and Support, but Valuable Reviewing of Results
A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed for an article in the NY Times about recent pushback against MOOCs. Jonathan Rees, a history professor at Colorado State University at Pueblo, who has written critically about MOOCs, said their spread is likely to lead to a three-tiered world, with a few high-status “super professors” for whom […]
Coursera Raises $43m, LMS and MOOC Collision In Learning Platform Market
Today Coursera announced their new round of fund raising, as reported at GigaOm: Just last year, online education startup Coursera raised $22 million in venture funding, but the Mountain View-based company is topping up its coffers once again. On Wednesday, the startup said it had raised $43 million in a Series B round of financing […]
CCSF Accreditation Crisis: Seven Years in the Making
Last week the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC), which operates under the corporate entity the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), voted to end accreditation for the City College of San Francisco (CCSF) as of July 31, 2014. Unless reversed, the loss of accreditation would like force the 85,000 student college to shut down. […]