Last week I described how UC Davis is making efforts to personalize one of the most impersonal of learning experiences – large lecture introductory science courses. It is telling that the first changes that they made were not to the lecture itself but to the associated discussion sections led by teaching assistants (TAs). It is […]
NY Times
UC Davis: A look inside attempts to make large lecture classes active and personal
In my recent keynote for the Online Teaching Conference, the core argument was as follows: While there will be (significant) unbundling around the edges, the bigger potential impact [of ed innovation] is how existing colleges and universities allow technology-enabled change to enter the mainstream of the academic mission. Let’s look at one example. Back in […]
NYT Michael Crow Condensed Interview: More Info needed . . . and available
The New York Times ran an “edited and condensed” interview with Arizona State University (ASU) president Michael Crow, titled “Reshaping Arizona State, and the Public Model”. Michael M. Crow sees Arizona State as the model of a public research university that measures itself by inclusivity, not exclusivity. In his 13 years as its president, he […]
No Discernible Growth in US Higher Ed Online Learning
By 2015, 25 million post-secondary students in the United States will be taking classes online. And as that happens, the number of students who take classes exclusively on physical campuses will plummet, from 14.4 million in 2010 to just 4.1 million five years later, according to a new forecast released by market research firm Ambient […]
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 […]