One of the fundamental differences between OCW and xMOOCs is that xMOOCs can be assessed on quality of instruction. From a longer paper by Sir John Daniel that is well worth the read: “We also agree with Bates that current xMOOCs pedagogy is pretty old hat but this will now change fast. Even if Coursera Continue reading

One additional point about the Circuits and Electronics course stats I cited yesterday. Most of the talk about MOOC-scale has been about the number of sign-ups. But that’s the wrong end of the problem. What we care about is cost per completion. And at 7,000 completers, there’s certainly some scale to this course but it’s not Continue reading

From IHE today: The age distribution of students who stuck it out with Circuits & Electronics favored what higher ed would call “nontraditional” students: Half of them were 26 years old or older. About 45 percent were traditional college-aged students, and 5 percent were in high school. The oldest probable-completer was 74; the youngest, 14. Continue reading

It occurs to me that there are two types of “unbundling” of education, and for the most part people focus on the wrong one. The first type, which we will call vertical unbundling, is the one that the educational futurists talk about — the separation of content from facilitation, and facilitation from assessment. This is Continue reading

At some point I want to summarize (and perhaps convince you all to read) Chris Hayes’s provocative book on meritocracy and its attendant myths, but for the moment I want to run ahead and just put this out there. Meritocracy, the flawed idea that an equality of opportunity leads to an equality of results (and Continue reading