In organizing the resignation of University of Virginia President Theresa Sullivan, Rector Helen E. Dragas may have expressed the concerns of many higher education boards of directors about the impact and effective use of education technology. Other Presidents and Chancellors may now have a similar career-threatening incentive. History in technology suggests a wave of implementation […]
MOOC
Four Barriers That MOOCs Must Overcome To Build a Sustainable Model
Given the hype of national media coverage of massive open online courses (MOOCs), it is refreshing to see more recent analysis looking at important attributes such as revenue models, dropout rates, and instructional design. Steve Kolowich at Inside Higher Ed wrote a revealing and important article looking at early demographic data. Jeff Young at the […]
MOOCs: Two Different Approaches to Scale, Access and Experimentation
In part 1 of this series, I described a new landscape of educational delivery models. In part 2 I described the master course concept and how it presents a cultural barrier that most traditional institutions cannot cross, at least without a dedicated online organization or an outsourced partnership. Why does it matter that we describe […]
The Master Course: A Key Difference in Educational Delivery Methods
In part 1 of this series of posts I presented a view of different educational delivery models based on course design and modality. Why does it matter that we describe these educational delivery models with finer granularity than just traditional and online? Because the aims of the models differ, as do the primary methods of […]
The Emerging Landscape of Educational Delivery Models
Part 2 in this series, on a key difference in educational delivery methods, can be found here. Traditional education or online education. In the past decade it seems that the dominant conversation has been around the potential for online learning, both from for-profit and non-profit options, to disrupt education as an industry. What I believe […]
Social Learning Tools Are Fine, But Not Critical For All Educational Models
We are in a high point of investment and interest in the application of technology to innovate education, and a lot of attention has been paid to the new class of learning platforms that have social tools at the center of the platform design – think Instructure, Coursekit, OpenClass, etc. I have written about several […]
The Zone of Proximal Curiosity
Gardner Campbell has a great piece at Campus Technology that asks the following question: What if we took another tack, specifying that students should not only remember information but also demonstrate increased curiosity? I have enormous sympathy for this line of inquiry. In this post, I’m going to cover why I think it’s so important, how educating […]