online education

Just Wondering

Byuclafaculty

Inside Higher Ed today carries a story about the Office of Civil Right of the U.S. Dept. of Education requiring a South Carolina educational institution to make its websites accessible to those with vision impairments or blindness.  Do the current crop of MOOCs (online courses) comply with that requirement?  Has anyone thought that issue through?  The Inside Higher Ed article is athttp://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/03/26/colleges-agree-make-websites-accessible-those-visual-disabilities It links to a press release from the Dept. of Education athttp://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/civil-rights-agreement-reached-south-carolina-technical-college-system-accessibi

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Divergent Views (and that’s all we know)

Byuclafaculty

Apparently, a meeting on the legislative proposal to create some kind of commission for approving online courses at UC, CSU, and the community colleges took place Tuesday.  Exactly what transpired at that meeting, however, is unclear.  The only comment so far has come from the legislative side.  Excerpt from the Contra Costa Times: …(State Senate President Darrell) Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said the first-of-its-kind legislation is aimed at relieving classroom bottlenecks that are making it more difficult to graduate. Faculty leaders counter that course access is not an acute issue within the UC system, which has some of the highest graduation rates…

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Bad PR on MOOcs – But Don’t Be Cowed

Byuclafaculty

We noted yesterday that an article in the San Francisco Chronicle indicated that faculty leaders from UC would be meeting today with state senate president Darrell Steinberg to discuss his bill on online higher ed. As the headline/extract below from the conservative news aggregator Flashreport suggests, it is easy to portray faculty objections as obstruction.  In fact, the objection is that the bill creates an external mechanism for course approval. The challenge, therefore, is a) to make the faculty objection clear and b) to try to persuade the relevant politcos (and the Regents?) that there is an established mechanism for…

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Who Owns the Course?

Byuclafaculty

Inside Higher Ed today carries a story about concerns at UC-Santa Cruz about the ownership of MOOCs.  UC-Santa Cruz is the one UC campus at which the local faculty association has collective bargaining rights: Faculty union officials in California worry professors who agree to teach free online classes could undermine faculty intellectual property rights and collective bargaining agreements. The union for faculty at the University of California at Santa Cruz said earlier this month it could seek a new round of collective bargaining after several professors agreed to teach classes on Coursera, the Silicon Valley-based provider of popular massive open…

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Survey Suggests It’s Time to Take a Deep Breath on MOOCs

Byuclafaculty

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a survey of 103 of 184 faculty members who have taught MOOCs.  The article that accompanies the survey is at: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Professors-Behind-the-MOOC/137905/#id=overview But the summary below should suggest anyone proposing rushing into this area on the grounds that it will save large amounts of money or even provide a route to credit at the institutions at which these faculty are based should take a deep breath before proceeding. The results are decidedly mixed and they come from a group of folks who are evidently enthused about the endeavor.  [Clicking on the images above will provide…

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A little online education for the folks in Sacramento

Byuclafaculty

From the LA Times: In a crossing of swords between academics and politicians, the University of California’s top two faculty leaders on Friday strongly criticized legislation that would allow students bumped from overcrowded core courses at state schools to instead take online courses from other colleges or private companies. The bill, authored by state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), “raises grave concerns,” Robert L. Powell and Bill Jacob, the chairman and vice chairman of the UC system’s faculty Senate, wrote in a letter to colleagues. Among other things, “the clear self-interest of for-profit corporations in promoting the privatization…

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Oh! So Clever!

Byuclafaculty

When it came to unveiling a new push to create a series of online courses for California college and university students, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg thought it was fitting to deliver the news in a decidedly digital fashion. So instead of holding a traditional press conference, the Sacramento Democrat and other supporters of the effort logged into Google to stage a “Hangout” video conference. “(Technology) is overwhelmingly I think a positive force in our lives we want to use it to try to help as many young people, as many students, as possible be able to keep their dreams and compete in the modern…

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Now here’s a bright idea…

Byuclafaculty

From Inside Higher Ed today: A powerful California lawmaker wants public college students who are shut out of popular courses to attend low-cost online alternatives – including those offered by for-profit companies – and he plans to encourage the state’s public institutions to grant credit for those classes. The proposal expected today from Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat and president pro tem of the state Senate, aims to create a “statewide system of faculty-approved, online college courses,” according to a written statement from Steinberg’s office. (A spokesman for Steinberg declined to discuss the bill.) Faculty would decide which courses should make the…

More in our coverage of teaching innovations

Byuclafaculty

Given the hunger at the Regents and with the governor for teaching innovations – notably online education – we have in past postings noted college courses on TV in the 1950s and on radio in the 1920s. Online ed is supposed to allow students to work at their own pace.  So may we present to you now, the Skinner teaching machine: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTH3ob1IRFo?feature=player_detailpage]

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