Getting More Moody(‘s)

Byuclafaculty
Yesterday, we noted how a lawsuit by a former UCLA basketball player had led Moody’s to lower the credit outlook for the NCAA.  More generally, Moody’s seems to be all over higher ed and now getting into the MOOC business.  According to Moody’s, big-name universities should be happy with MOOCs and lesser ones should be sad.  From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

The spread of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, is “credit positive” for universities that offer them but “credit negative” for a majority of lesser-known institutions that lack a prominent brand name, according to a report published on Monday by Moody’s Investors Service.  The announcement comes a year after the credit-rating agency predicted that MOOCs could improve the financial prospects of large research universities while presenting challenges to smaller institutions and for-profit colleges…

Full story at http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/moodys-says-moocs-could-boost-a-universitys-credit-rating/44519
 

Maybe it’s best not to be Moody:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFJeP_8xqNU?feature=player_detailpage]

Is this the worst song ever written or what?

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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

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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…