In the operating plan slide deck that Cengage recently released as a consequence of their bankruptcy proceedings, the executive summary slide says that a key element of their strategy is “driving aggressive digital growth in a course model.” “Course solutions” is mentioned three times in the deck as well. Cengage, as a company, is essentially […]
MOOC
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 […]
BREAKING: Blackboard Uses “MOOC” in a Sentence
This week we heard the news that Blackboard…um…they are…well…something about MOOCs. They like them, I think. Or something. Look, I get it. The company has realized that they need to take more direct action in response to the MOOC trend and, while they are not yet in position to make a specific product announcements, they […]
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 […]
Open University in the UK, 40 Years After First Graduation
There’s an interesting three-minute video produced by the BBC that covers the Open University at 40. It was a ground-breaking idea, and to date over 1.8 million students have obtained degrees. The current educational technology boom and interest in online education, including the MOOC phenomenon, owes a great deal to the Open University. As it’s […]
MOOCs Beyond Professional Development: Coursera’s Big Announcement in Context
One aspect of last week’s Coursera announcement was the acknowledgement that MOOCs to date have primarily served as a mechanism for professional development, not as a mechanism for serving higher education per se. In the Chronicle article: Daphne Koller, a co-founder of Coursera, acknowledged that the company was venturing into new terrain. After studying their MOOC […]