Year: 2013

  • Surprise!

    Byuclafaculty

    As a follow-up to yesterday’s story about the announcement of deals with MOOC suppliers by various state university systems across the nation, Inside Higher Ed reports today that for many faculty, at those systems it was a surprise: Some faculty leaders were surprised this week when state systems and flagship universities in nine states announced a series of new business partnerships with Coursera, the Silicon Valley-based ed tech company. The universities plan to work with Coursera  a provider of massive open online courses, to try out a variety of new teaching methods and business models, including MOOCs and things that…

  • It’s getting hard to turn your back on the MOOc stampede

    Byuclafaculty

    No one wants to be BEHIND the times. The latest entries in the stampede to MOOCs: From the San Jose Mercury-News: Coursera strikes huge online-education deal with state university systems  The movement of “massive online open courses,” which began with elite universities making their courses available online to the masses, is rapidly moving into the trenches of public higher education. On Thursday, 10 large public university systems — including the giant state systems of New York, Tennessee, Colorado and the University of Houston — will announce plans to incorporate MOOCs and platforms offered through for-profit Coursera of Mountain View into…

  • Evaluation

    Byuclafaculty

    On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate this instructor? Exodus 4:10: Then Moses said to the Lord, “Please, Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither recently nor in time past, nor since You have spoken to Your servant; for I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.”  We don’t know how the Israelites evaluated what Moses had to say on a scale from 1 to 10 – ten is the obvious upper bound in his case – but those who are non-eloquent might take comfort from today’s Inside Higher Ed: Imagine you receive the same lecture twice:…

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    Those Empty Westwood Stores

    Byuclafaculty

    Despite efforts to revitalize Westwood, there remain all of those empty storefronts up and down Westwood Boulevard between campus and Wilshire. Yet there is lots of foot traffic related to the university in Westwood and the proximity of a large student community. So why the empty stores despite all of those students? The LA Weekly thinks it has the answer: Living in Westwood is like being trapped in Footloose’s Bomont, Georgia.* There are no clubs, no open mics, no student centers, no anything. It’s bad. They’re even shutting down one of the only two bars students go to with much…

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    Harvard Was Shocked and Appalled that Emails Weren’t Private: Now Comes the Aftershock

    Byuclafaculty

    In an earlier post, we noted a brouhaha at Harvard in which a dean authorized a search of other deans’ emails to determine if any of them had leaked some information about a cheating scandal. Faculty at Harvard were shocked and appalled that such a search could occur. We noted that at public universities, emails you may think of as private really aren’t.  Apparently even at private institutions, the same cautionary note applies, although for other reasons. Even if you use a private email account such as gmail to send messages to recipients at UCLA or any public university, the…

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    Udacity’s MOOC Contract Details: Lesson in Audacity? (And then there is GlaxoSmithKline’s invitation to UCLA faculty)

    Byuclafaculty

    Inside Higher Ed today is running a feature on a contract between MOOC supplier Udacity and Georgia Tech to run a master’s program in computer science.  The essence of the story is that the contract calls for some of the folks actually running the course to be company employees: …Georgia Tech this month announced its plans to offer a $6,630 online master’s degree to 10,000 new students over the next three years without hiring much more than a handful of new instructors. Georgia Tech and Udacity, a Silicon Valley-based startup, will work with AT&T, which is putting up $2 million to…

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    UCLA Pre-History: Cemetery

    Byuclafaculty

    The veterans’ cemetery in Westwood long predates UCLA’s presence in the area.  The cemetery dates back to 1889 and originally was meant for Civil War veterans.  However, the statue at the Wilshire Blvd. entrance (see photo) refers to the Spanish-American War of 1898: “The United Spanish War Veterans monument, also known as the Spirit of ’98, is a bright white marble composition of three figures completed in 1950 by sculptor Roger Noble Burnham. The memorial crumbled after a 1971 earthquake. In 1973, sculptor David Wilkens re-created the monument out of concrete and plaster, reinforcing it with rebar. The plaque from…

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    Movie Delay

    Byuclafaculty

    The old AVCO movie theater on Wilshire a block or so east of Westwood Blvd. was supposed to be reopened by now after reconstruction as a high-end, upscale affair with prices that seem beyond student budgets. According to LAObserved, the reopening has been delayed until maybe Thanksgiving due to discovery of asbestos issues in the theater.  That is, the revamped theater will be open again around Thanksgiving or beyond as-best-as we can tell. Full story at http://www.laobserved.com/biz/2013/05/delay_in_opening_wes.php.

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    Food Gift for Thought

    Byuclafaculty

    From the Westwood-Century City Patch: A $4 million gift to the UCLA School of Law will go toward establishing a program to study and improve food law and policy, it was announced Friday. The Resnick Program for Food Law and Policy, said to be the first program of its kind at a major law school, will explore ways to hasten improvements in food safety, distribution and access, according to UCLA. The gift from the Resnick Family Foundation provides for as much as another $3 million in matching endowment funds. Lynda and Stewart Resnick ,who own such companies as POM Wonderful,…