There are gender wars, and then there are casualties. It wasn’t until 2011 that the behemoth toymaker LEGO acknowledged girls’ desire to build with bricks, even though the company had long before made a seemingly effortless pivot to co-branding, video games, and major motion pictures. So it’s little wonder that girls face all-too-real obstacles when […]
Read moreTag: higher education
Online education can have a real impact in the developing world. Last week, we needed to hire a programmer for a small freelance job. To my surprise, several candidates advertised they had completed programming MOOCs. These were young programmers in their 20’s, in countries like Pakistan and Thailand, who lacked college-level coursework, but are trying to launch freelancing careers based on online courses.
Online courses and MOOCs may be a poor substitute for in-person learning with a charismatic teacher, but they are light-years better than nothing, and are particularly relevant for higher education and specific skills, when students are self-motivated. (more…)
Online courses with very large enrollments have rapidly matured in the last two years, led largely by experiments outside mainstream academia by Coursera, Udacity and edX. Ambitious educators, technologists, and funders have created courses on diverse topics, and over five million students worldwide have registered for classes. And 3% have completed the courses. What can we learn? (more…)
Undergraduate education is valuable, but expensive, averaging $375/course at a community college, and $3.5k/course at a private university. As higher education explores new business models, many are trying out free massive enrollment courses. These courses are typically not for credit (which is easier to administer and get internal approval for), and allows the schools to see what it takes chance the assumptions about delivering education. (more…)
“The debate about which is better, face-to-face learning or online learning is fast becoming obsolete,” says Jennifer Berghage, an instructional designer at Pennsylvania State University. The common goal is that “an online course should be, above all, engaging, so that the learner enjoys the learning and is able to not only assimilate it but retain it and apply it.”
Online courses are revolutionizing formal education, and have opened a new genre of outreach on cultural and scientific topics. These courses deliver a series of lessons to a web browser or mobile device, to be conveniently accessed anytime, anyplace. (more…)
Mobiles and eBooks will be a big deal in higher education by the end of the year, predicts a panel of 42 experts in education, technology, and business in a new report jointly released by a consortium and association related to higher education. These predictions are gathered in the “2011 Horizon Report,” released today.
Also, coming soon, these experts predict that by 2014, augmented reality and game-based learning will be important. And by 2016, they predict students will often use gestures to interact with computers, and that learning analytics will be common.
Do we need yet another online version of Economics 101? Why are universities putting courseware online, and what’s in it for students and schools? Inside Higher Ed’s post by Steve Kolowich, “Online Courseware’s Existential Moment,” discusses the world of open courseware, and what the next chapter may look like. He includes a short interview with Taylor Walsh, author of Unlocking the Gate, a new book about how universities are opening up access to courses. Here are some key points and excerpts from the article: