After a great deal of publicity from their spring and summer pilots, San Jose State University has just announced that they will offer three of the courses again in Spring 2014 – but with a twist. On the surface, the announcement sounds like a continuation of the pilot. This spring, San Jose State will offer […]
SJSU
Effort and Engagement
I’ve been thinking a little more this morning about the language used by the researchers in the SJSU Udacity report. They focus a lot on student “effort.” But it’s also pretty common in education to talk about “engagement.” From a technical perspective, the researchers chose the better word. “Effort” is meant to be an observable […]
You know what would help MOOC articles? Getting the facts and goals right before analyzing
Keith Devlin has an article at Huffington Post today titled “MOOC Mania Meets the Sober Reality of Education”. The premise is that the halting of the San Jose State University (SJSU) / Udacity pilot project and of SB 520 show that naive assumptions on the power of MOOCs to disrupt higher education are insufficient in […]
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 […]
Recent LMS Selections Hint at Continuing Market Changes
Now that we’re in the middle of June – near the end of the fiscal year for many schools and leading up to user conferences for many LMS vendors – we are starting to see some significant LMS and learning platform announcements. While we typically have a surge in announcements this time of year, this […]