MOOC problem

Byuclafaculty

Inside Higher Ed has an article today on the problem of hate speech and suicide threats that appear among the many student comments in online MOOCs.  Excerpt:

…Troubled MOOC users are an elephant in the room, said Gary Pavela, the author of a book on college student suicide and an instructor at Syracuse University and the University of Maryland’s College Park campus…

Different analogies could be applied.  Since such courses are MOOcs, we prefer seeing the problem as a bull in a china shop.

The article is at:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/03/06/professors-wonder-how-deal-suicidal-or-homicidal-students-online

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Jerry Brown Looks for an Online Course that Requires No Human Interaction

Byuclafaculty

At the Regents meeting of January 22, 2014, Gov. Brown seems to be searching for an online course that requires no human interaction.  Such a course, he reasons, could have unlimited enrollment because it is completely self-contained.  He gets some pushback from UC Provost Dorr, who thinks courses should have such interaction.  You can hear this excerpt at the link below.  The entire meeting of the Committee on Educational Policy of the Regents was posted yesterday.[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tYFLJvrE3g?feature=player_detailpage]

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Listen to Part of the Regents Afternoon Session of 1-22-2014

Byuclafaculty

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MOOCs in the Muck

Byuclafaculty

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MOOc

Byuclafaculty

An interesting analysis of MOOCs in a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper by Stanford economist Caroline M. Hoxby suggests that heavy dependence on online ed won’t work for what she terms highly selective post-secondary educational institutions.  In essence, such institutions depend in important ways on alumni loyalty which is hard to obtain if students take courses online that come from anywhere. Abstract: I consider how online postsecondary education, including massive open online courses (MOOCs), might fit into economically sustainable models of postsecondary education. I contrast nonselective postsecondary education (NSPE)in which institutions sell fairly standardized educational services in return…

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Whatever happened to the era of limits?

Byuclafaculty

In his first iteration as governor, back in the 1970s and early 1980s, Gov. Brown emphasized the “era of limits.”  Yesterday at the Regents, however, he apparently wanted to push those limits when it came to online education:  Jerry Brown pushes UC to find “outer limits” of online education …Sitting in on part of Wednesday’s meeting, Brown challenged regents to develop classes that require no “human intervention” and might expand the system’s reach beyond its student body.  “If this university can probe into” black holes, he said, “can’t somebody create a course — Spanish, calculus, whatever — totally online? That…