I’ve been really curious about how much (and in what way) xMOOC students use forums.    And I can’t find any good data on it. Not even a “per capita visits to forum” number. This is pretty suboptimal for the field, since one of the main advantages of MOOCs often presented is the conversation they allow Continue reading

I’ve known (ever since my own short stint in higher education marketing) that the demographics of the U.S. are a bit dismal from here on out. The situation, which I’ve jokingly referred to as “Peak Demo”, is that most growth in higher education has been funded by the 17-24 year old set, and that demographic Continue reading

Last night, shortly after falling asleep, I had bizarre dreams, dreams likely created out of the post Brian put up, a post largely about whether institutions block social progress or facilitate it. Dreams aren’t really interesting to read on paper, so I’ll spare you the imagery. But the subject of bloat kept coming up. All Continue reading

Got a note from Larry Welkowitz, who is teaching the Canvas.net MOOC we were putting together when I left. They haven’t got through QA yet (Canvas.net has a course QA process), but Larry recorded his Hello video: Larry is going to be excellent. You already see that here — he wants to shoot outside for Continue reading

So I think with the recent San Jose State news people may finally start to pay attention to the use of MOOCs and MOOC-like things to support blended learning, a match-up we’ve been supporting here for a while. Good, and glad to see it. Although there is still this pesky little issue of what to Continue reading

Today I was reading Pamela Fox’s blog post about discussions inside Coursera on whether they want to open up their code. It’s a thoughtful treatment of the subject, and contains I think a nice discussion of some of the hidden costs of going the open source route. It’s great to see engineers at Coursera thinking about this (see, Continue reading

Just put in this proposal to a conference, thought it was worth reposting here as a discussion starter: The “wrapped MOOC” has gained attention over the past year as a way to integrate MOOCs into traditional education. This presentation will present results of interviews with practitioners of this method to show that in practice most Continue reading

The fever-dream formerly known as California continues to provide insight into where we as a country might be headed. This week, we’re hearing about proposed bill AB 1306, which proposes to create a new faculty-free “university” that will provide exam-based degrees. (Jim Julius, you win the prognostication prize on this one). Looking at the bill, Continue reading

From an article on Bowen, one of the theorists behind the Cost Disease model of higher education inflation: At a recent conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bowen looked around a room of mostly Ivy League faculty members gathered at an invitation-only conference about the future of the residential college in the digital age. There were, it Continue reading