Tag Archives: OnlineLearning
Online learning improves when you feel like you belong
LinkedIn Learning arrives to build out your ‘skills’ section
MIT’s online master’s courses sound like an incredible deal
Google teams up with edX to create the YouTube for online education
Google's big list of open source projects just grew by one -- the company has introduced a new online learning platform called MOOC.org. Despite the name, it's not a website about cows -- MOOC stands for "massive open online courses," and it's a product of the marriage between Mountain View and edX, an educational website by MIT and Harvard. However, while edX only features free courses from affiliated universities, MOOC.org will accept material submitted by other institutions, governments, businesses and even individuals. In short, just about anyone can pitch in -- edX's president even revealed that they want the site to eventually become the "YouTube for MOOCs." The companies have yet to reveal how they'll screen submitted courses for quality and how contributors can earn money, but we'll likely find out when the site launches in mid-2014. Self-motivated folks eager to learn will have to hang out around libraries, campuses and TED talks until then.
[Image credit: University of Salford, Flickr]
Source: mooc.org, Google Research
SUNY partners with Coursera for massively open online course experiment
Massive open online courses have the potential to alter how we teach and learn as a society, but unlike other methods that are steeped in centuries of trial and error, the MOOC concept remains experimental and unproven -- often criticized as better suited for edification than rigorous education. Like edX, Coursera is working to challenge that assumption, and today the online course provider announced partnerships with ten public university systems that'll integrate lessons from Coursera into the classroom. Most notably, The State University of New York is participating, which boasts 64 campuses and an enrollment of nearly half a million students. While its implementation remains up in the air, SUNY aims to introduce Coursera materials this fall and over the next few years as part of its Open SUNY initiative.
Like SUNY, all partner schools may adapt lessons from Coursera as they see fit, and professors will have the opportunity to develop online courses for Coursera. Most significantly, the pilot programs will give universities an opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of Coursera material, which could go a long way toward legitimizing the MOOC concept. As another happy consequence, universities may choose to offer for-credit courses from Coursera to non-matriculated students. For a greater understanding of this grand experiment, just hit up the source links.
[Image credit: Dave Herholz / Flickr]
Filed under: Internet
Via: The Verge, InformationWeek
Universities to offer free online courses with credit, let us try before we learn
It's not really practical to give universities a meaningful test drive. Not without ample amounts of money and time to throw at a practice semester, at least. It's about to become comparatively trivial. Arizona State, the University of Cincinnati and 38 other institutions are teaming up with Academic Partnerships to offer the first course from certain online degrees for free -- and, more importantly, to make it count as credit. Money only matters to participants (and Academic Partnerships) if they move on to the full program. Prospective students will have to wait until the spring to sign up for what's ultimately a freemium education, but patience could be a virtue if it means understanding the workload before committing to what may be years of higher learning.
[Image credit: Dave Herholz, Flickr]
Via: New York Times
Source: MOOC2Degree
Google releases Course Builder, takes online learning down an open-source road
Google is well-known for projects with unexpected origins. It's almost natural, then, that the code Google used to build a web course has led to a full-fledged tool for online education. The open-source Course Builder project lets anyone make their own learning resources, complete with scheduled activities and lessons, if they've got some skill with HTML and JavaScript. There's also an avenue for live teaching or office hours: the obligatory Google+ tie-in lets educators announce Hangouts on Air sessions. Code is available immediately, although you won't need to be grading virtual papers to see the benefit. A handful of schools that include Stanford, UC San Diego and Indiana University are at least exploring the use of Course Builder in their own initiatives, which could lead to more elegant internet learning -- if also fewer excuses for slacking.
Filed under: Internet
Google releases Course Builder, takes online learning down an open-source road originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Sep 2012 20:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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