e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: Udacity

  • Online Program Management: A view of the market landscape

    One of the fastest-growing market segments in ed tech, and one of the least-understood, is that of Online Program Management (OPM). It doesn’t help that the terms OPM, Online Enablers, Online Service Providers are used interchangeably, although OPM is the most common now.

    OPM providers are organizations (mostly for-profit companies, but with at least one non-profit variation) that help non-profit schools develop online programs, most often for Master’s level programs. These providers provide various services for which traditional institutions historically have not had the experience or culture to support. Some examples of the services include marketing & recruitment, enrollment management, curriculum development, online course design, student retention support, technology hosting, and student and faculty support.

    It would be useful to go beyond the label and get a broader view. (more…)

  • Georgia Tech and Udacity MOOC Degree: Missing targets but still worth watching

    Melissa Korn wrote an article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal giving a progress report on that Georgia Tech / Udacity MOOC degree (the master’s in computer science).

    The Georgia Tech online computer-science program is relatively massive: It has 2,789 students enrolled this semester, compared with 312 in the campus-based version. It’s on track to turn a profit by May, according to Charles Isbell Jr., senior associate dean at the College of Computing. It has a steady stream of more than 1,300 applicants for each new term. [snip]

    At Georgia Tech, Mr. Isbell is still thinking on a grand scale: “It wouldn’t surprise me if three years from now we’re talking about 10,000 students instead of 3,000 students,” he said. “This is sustainable and this is scalable.”

    (more…)

  • LinkedIn: I Told You So (Sorta)

    In December 2012, I tweeted:

    https://twitter.com/mfeldstein67/status/276406235564220416

    At the time, Coursera was the darling of online ed startups. Since then, it has lost its way somewhat, while Lynda.com has taken off like a rocket. Which is probably one big reason why LinkedIn chose to acquire Lynda.com (rather than Coursera) for $1.5 billion. I still think it’s possible that they could acquire a MOOC provider as well, but Udacity seems like a better fit than Coursera at this point.

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: LinkedIn is the most interesting company in ed tech.

  • The Quotable Justin Reich: MOOC research needs to reboot

    Thanks to Audrey Watters I just read a new article in Science Magazine and publicly posted here by Justin Reich, the lead researcher for HarvardX (Harvard’s implementation of edX and associated research team) ((Note that Science Magazine access requires a subscription or purchase or individual article.)). Justin calls out the limitations of current MOOC research that focuses on A/B testing and engagement instead of learning, single-course context, and post hoc analysis with proper course design. While praising the field for making available cleansed data for any type of analysis, his core argument is that we need new approaches that cannot be solved just by research teams.
    Update: Added link to publicly-available DOCX article.

    While the whole article is worth reading, there are quite a few insightful quotes should get past the journal paywall.

    • Big data sets do not, by virtue of their size, inherently possess answers to interesting questions.
    • We have terabytes of data about what students clicked and very little understanding of what changed in their heads.
    • It does not require trillions of event logs to demonstrate that effort is correlated with achievement.

    (more…)

  • The Battle for Open and MOOC Completion Rates

    Yesterday I wrote a post on the 20 Million Minds blog about Martin Weller’s new book The Battle for Open: How openness won and why it doesn’t feel like victory. Exploring different aspects of open in higher education – open access, MOOCs, open education resources and open scholarship – Weller shows how far the concept of openness has come, to the point where “openness is now such a part of everyday life that it seems unworthy of comment”. If you’re interested in OER, open courses, open journals, or open research in higher education – get the book (it’s free and available in a variety of formats).

    Building on the 20MM post about the ability to reuse or repurpose the book itself, I would like to expand on a story from early 2013 where I happen to play a role. I’ll mix in Weller’s description (MW) from the book with Katy Jordan’s data (KJ) and my own description (PH) from this blog post.

    (MW) I will end with one small example, which pulls together many of the strands of openness. Katy Jordan is a PhD student at the OU focusing on academic networks on sites such as Academia. edu. She has studied a number of MOOCs on her own initiative to supplement the formal research training offered at the University. One of these was an infographics MOOC offered by the University of Texas. For her final visualisation project on this open course she decided to plot MOOC completion rates on an interactive graph, and blogged her results (Jordan 2013).

    (more…)

  • Partial Transcript: Richard Levin (new Coursera CEO) on Charlie Rose

    I have written two posts recently about Coursera’s appointment of the former president of Yale as the company’s new CEO, with the implicit argument that this move represents a watershed moment for commercial MOOCs. In particular, Coursera seems likely to become the third generation of Richard Levin’s dream, following AllLearn and Open Yale Courses. I’ve also argued that Levin is embellishing the history by making Internet bandwidth a primary factor in the demise of AllLearn when the lack of a viable business model was the more important issue, with even Levin arguing this point.

    Richard Levin was just interviewed by Charlie Rose, and I am including a transcript of most of the segment (starting around 3:15), highlighting some key points in bold. This interview should give us further insight into the future of commercial MOOCs, especially as we have the first non-founder CEO in one of the big three commercial MOOC providers. Follow this link to watch on CharlieRose.com and avoid the annoying Hulu ad.

    Rose: You could have gotten a government job, as an ambassador or something; maybe been Secretary of the Treasury as far as I know . . . you could have done a lot of things. But you’re out running some online education company (laughs).

    Levin: It’s a fantastic mission, it’s really the perfect job for me and for following a university president’s [job].

    Rose: Why’s that?

    Levin: One, I like running things, so it’s an opportunity to run something. But most important it’s so much an extension of what I’ve tried to do. It’s to take Yale to the world, and this is an opportunity to take 108 of the world’s greatest educational institutions (and there’ll probably be some more) and teach the planet.

    (more…)

  • Coursera and edX Hire New Executives: What about online experience?

    Today’s big news is the concurrent change in leadership at two of the big three MOOC providers. First, Coursera announced they had hired Richard Levin, former president of Yale University, to be the company’s new CEO. Besides being a big-name college executive, Levin also led (or at least was president during) the development of Open Yale Courses. As reported by the New York Times:

    Mr. Levin, who has been an adviser to Coursera since January, has been experimenting with online education for years, beginning in 2000 in a partnership with Stanford and Oxford. In 2007, he started Open Yale Courses to make dozens of classes taught by Yale professors available without cost.

    “The main thing we will work on is to establish this model so our partner universities feel that offering large-scale MOOCs is an important part of their mission that helps faculty expand their reach, and benefits the world,” Mr. Levin said.

    Mr. Levin, who has extensive experience in China, will also work on expanding Coursera’s presence there. Already, he said, China is the second-biggest source of Coursera enrollment, after the United States.

    Meanwhile, the Coursera founders and previous president are taking on new roles. Daphne Koller will become president, Andrew Ng will become chairman of the board of directors and chief evangelist, and Lila Ibrahim will become chief business officer.

    On the same day, coincidentally, edX announced they had hired Wendy Cebula as the company’s new president and chief operating officer. According to the company’s web site: (more…)