The CEO of Coursera shares three trends that he thinks will shape the relationship between education and employment in the near future:
Research shows most teachers teach as they were taught. However, distance educators lack a model or benchmark for online teaching because many of them have not taken online courses as students. Indeed, many studies on teaching online point to the importance of training for online instructors. Few studies go into specifics about exactly what that training should look like. The purpose of this study is to examine best practices in professional development for instructors learning to teach online.
The University of Illinois is rolling out an online master’s in data science, which will be offered in conjunction with Coursera. The new degree costs $19,200, and builds on the certificates of completion already associated with the university’s pre-existing Coursera MOOCs.
Students who have already received those certificates will have a head start toward finishing the new degree, since those certificates make up two of the four distinct areas of study. The others are data visualization and machine learning. If admitted into the program, students could trade in those certificates for course credit.
Purdue University is launching a competency-based interdisciplinary bachelor’s degree, which will combine technical and humanities fields. It was recently approved by Purdue’s regional accreditor.
Purdue’s degree track is based on the credit-hour standard, in which the demonstration of competencies is linked to corresponding college credit. This approach differs from relatively new competency-based offerings from a handful of other institutions, which use a method called direct assessment. That model is completely untethered from the credit hour, and students can move on as soon as they demonstrate mastery of required concepts.
At Purdue, however, studio and seminar-style “learning environments” will account for 35 percent of students’ plan of study.
Fain, Paul. “Competency for the Traditional Age Student.” Inside Higher Ed, March 30, 2016.
A summary of how summer online courses are developed at the University of Connecticut, and the value they add to the undergraduate residential experience.
Every year, the university offers 35 to 40 new online courses for its shortened summer session, a popular time for students to earn credits away from campus, Associate Director of UConn eCampus Desmond McCaffrey said.
Wright, Bailey. “Students Favor Summer Online Courses for Convenience.” Daily Campus, 3.2.16.
A report on a Gates Foundation-funded effort to encourage technology vendors to prepare to better support the anticipated growth in CBE initiatives.
Institutions should press their vendors to provide demonstrations of their CBE capabilities in real-world scenarios. They should not rely on generalizations or broad assurances about CBE being supportable by features not designed to support competencies as full-fledged entities in the product’s integrated database.
Links to abstracts of studies completed by the CCRC, pertaining to the efficacy of online education and instructional technology. Titles include:
2015 has seen some interesting developments in online learning. Here is a recap of some key trends, as well as critical components for higher education to consider in innovating online learning to improve student success in online programs and courses.
A round-up of studies on the efficacy of online education, with a particular focus on the two-year college:
Students who take online courses at community colleges get good grades in lower percentages, but (and this is a big but) they graduate sooner and in greater percentages.
No Significant Difference is a web site companion for Thomas Russell’s The No Significant Difference Phenomenon: A Comparative Research Annotated Bibliography on Technology for Distance Education, now in its fifth edition.
In addition to studies that document no significant difference (NSD), the website includes studies which do document significant differences in student outcomes based on the mode of education delivery. The significant difference (SD) entries on the website are further classified into three categories.
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