e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: Miami Dade College

  • New post at 20MM: Two Approaches to Watch in Remedial Education Innovation

    The 20 Million Minds Foundation is starting a new blog, and for topics of mutual interest, Michael and I will be posting articles  several times a month on their site and occasionally cross-posting here. The first article of mine went up last week.

    Two Approaches to Watch in Remedial Education Innovation

    It is no secret that the current approach to remedial (or developmental) courses does not work. According to a study by Complete College America (see original for footnotes documenting sources):

    “The numbers tell a dispiriting story. Half of all undergraduates and 70 percent of community college students take at least one remedial course. Too many of these students never overcome being placed into a remedial course. Only about a quarter of community college students who take a remedial course graduate within eight years. In fact, most students who are referred to remedial education do not even complete the remedial sequence: One study found 46 percent of students completed the sequence in reading and only 33 percent completed it in math.”

    Following the maxim that “if it doesn’t work, try something else”, two community colleges on opposite coasts – Miami-Dade College in Florida and Cerritos College in California – are trying to change the game. What can we learn from these two divergent examples?

    Read the whole article here.

     

  • Big 3 MOOC Providers Turning One Year Old

    We are in the middle of the first anniversary of the creation of the big 3 MOOC providers (Coursera, Udacity, edX).

    • Sebastian Thrun announced the creation of Udacity on January 23, 2012 as described by Reuters.
    • Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng announced the creation of Coursera on April 18, 2012 in this NY Times article.
    • MIT and Harvard announced the creation of edX on May 2, 2012 in this MIT article.

    And what a year it’s been, especially in terms of the engagement of national media, university presidents and boards on the topic of MOOCs, online education and the future of higher education in general. I doubt there is a higher education conference this year that doesn’t mention MOOCs in one form or another.

    But one year is a seriously short time period for higher education and educational technology, which are just not used to changes on this time scale. To give some perspective, consider the following:

    • There are quite a few ed tech products that have been or will have been in beta or introductory mode for at least a year when fully released.
    • This time one year ago, few people outside of Virginia knew what a Rector or how a board of them might force a president to resign partially based on discussions about MOOCs.
    • Many LMS and almost all student information system / ERP selection processes (not even including implementation) take more than a year.