Outside of the Vatican, the big news this week in higher education is the proposed legislation in California that would identify and approve a set of up to 50 online courses that the three public systems would accept as credit for admitted students. Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg is co-authoring SB520 that addresses popular, […]
Udacity
The Most Thorough Summary (to date) of MOOC Completion Rates
How many times have you heard the statement that ‘MOOCs have a completion rate of 10%’ or ‘MOOCs have a completion rate of less than 10%’? The meme seems to have developed a life of its own, but try to research the original claim and you might find a bunch of circular references or anecdotes […]
Is Coursera Facebook, Amazon, or Pets.com?
Before I get started, let me just say that Phil can vouch for the fact that I had already planned to use “Pets.com” in the title of this post before MIT Technology Review used it in their article on Minerva. As we’ll see, there are reasons to reach for that particular analogy at this particular moment […]
Canvas Network – Are the LMS and MOOC Markets Colliding?
Six weeks ago I posted a new graphic on the LMS market which included MOOCs in the same view as traditional LMS solutions. In the comments to the post there was an interesting note from Josh Coates (Instructure CEO) in response to whether MOOCs should be so closely aligned with the LMS market: i agree with you [fellow commenter […]
Everybody Wants to MOOC the World
You may have seen this week’s announcement from Instructure of their new Canvas Network to support MOOCs and other open courses. Blackboard has already been dipping its toe in this water, having had Curtiss Bonk run a MOOC on CourseSites. I also find it significant that Blackboard (somewhat awkwardly) made an attempt to remind the market […]
Google Introduces Course Builder, an Open Source Project Targeted at MOOCs (but the Real Competitor Might Be Amazon)
Google quietly made an educational technology announcement yesterday about the release of Course Builder, an “open source project” targeted at massive open online courses (MOOCs). This platform follows on the heels of Google’s own MOOC this summer. We should find out more information over the coming months, but here are my initial observations after reading the Research Blog on Google’s […]
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 […]