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ScienceGuide: carrots massive free online textbooks. 14 mei 2013 - MOOC giant Coursera starts pilot programs with several education publishers to provide students with free e-textbooks.

ScienceGuide: carrots massive free online textbooks

Student benefit, since they can use the needed content for free as long as the course takes. Publishers as well see new opportunities to develop better learning materials and sell more. The course materials from a range of publishers, including Macmillan, Oxford University Press and SAGE and Wiley, would be available through e-readers from student-services company Chegg. MOOC students will not be able to print or download the content of these textbooks, but they will be freely accessible during the length of the course. Coursera co-founder Daphne Koller explained that these textbooks will be a significant benefit for a global learning community. E-textbooks in MOOCs are not completely new, MITx offered textbooks before in its 'Global Poverty' course. Lift burden from teachers. FRIEDMAN MOOC's.

Let's see

The Virtual Revolution Doug Rushkoff on 'free' Diane Ravitch & Brian Jones Discuss Education Funding and Policy on Democracy Now! 2 of 2. Evolution MOOC's. » Napster, Udacity, and the Academy Clay Shirky. Fifteen years ago, a research group called The Fraunhofer Institute announced a new digital format for compressing movie files.

» Napster, Udacity, and the Academy Clay Shirky

This wasn’t a terribly momentous invention, but it did have one interesting side effect: Fraunhofer also had to figure out how to compress the soundtrack. The result was the Motion Picture Experts Group Format 1, Audio Layer III, a format you know and love, though only by its acronym, MP3. The recording industry concluded this new audio format would be no threat, because quality mattered most. Who would listen to an MP3 when they could buy a better-sounding CD at the record store?

Then Napster launched, and quickly became the fastest-growing piece of software in history. If Napster had only been about free access, control of legal distribution of music would then have returned the record labels. How did the recording industry win the battle but lose the war? MOOCs are Marketing. Earlier this week, Georgia Tech and eleven other higher education institutions announced their participation in Coursera, a company that hosts online courses.

Reactions have been predictably dramatic, as exemplified by Jordan Weissman's panegyric in the Atlantic, titled The Single Most Important Experiment in Higher Education. I'll spare observations on the obvious problems with Weissman's article, like the witless claim that lectures as web video somehow "reinvent" the lecture. Or the fact that Weissman published an article two weeks ago titled Why the Internet Isn't Going to End College As We Know It. (pdf) Making sense of MOOC s Musings in a Maze of Myth, Paradox and Possibility. Making Sense of MOOCs: Musings in a Maze of Myth, Paradox and Possibility. Networks, the rate of profit and institutionalising MOOCs. In an excellent article on Technology, Distribution and the Rate of Profit in the US Economy: Understanding the Current Crisis, Basu and Vasudevan scope the connections between falling capital productivity, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, and technological innovation.

Networks, the rate of profit and institutionalising MOOCs

Specifically they argue that the period preceding the current financial crisis in 2008 witnessed a significant and sharp fall in capital productivity and hence in profitability, and that this counteracted the rises that were accrued from the widespread implementation of information technology, techniques of new managerialism and the tendency towards financialisation in the previous three decades. For a critique of MOOCs/whatever and the restructuring of the University.

In analyses of the circuits and cycles of capitalism, interpretations of crises underpin our individual and collective responses to them.

For a critique of MOOCs/whatever and the restructuring of the University

Escaping the caduceus of technology-fuelled privatisation and student debt. When the culture’s drowning in a bad dream/Save myself, save myself and When the old religion is the new greed/Save myself, save myself and They sabotaged the levee, killed gris gris/Save myself, save myself and When the vultures copyright the word free/Save myself, I got to save myself.

escaping the caduceus of technology-fuelled privatisation and student debt

Essay critiques the ideas of Clay Shirky and others advocating higher ed disruption. Clay Shirky is a big thinker, and I read him because he’s consistently worth reading.

Essay critiques the ideas of Clay Shirky and others advocating higher ed disruption

But he’s not always right – and his thinking (and the flaws in it) is typical of the unquestioning enthusiasm of many thinkers today about technology and higher education. In his recent piece on "Napster, Udacity, and the Academy," for example, Shirky is not only guardedly optimistic about the ways that MOOCs and online education will transform higher education, but he takes for granted that they will, that there is no alternative. Just as inevitably as digital sharing turned the music industry on its head, he pronounces, so it is and will be with digital teaching. Evgenymorozov : God, this Shirky-trashing is... IHE: How open are MOOC's ? DENVER — MOOCs are on the tip of everyone’s tongue here at the annual Educause meeting, presumably because of their scale and the technologies their recent champions have built to support that scale.

IHE: How open are MOOC's ?

But in his opening keynote, Clay Shirky, an author and assistant professor at New York University, said the most provocative aspect of MOOCs is not their massiveness; it is their openness. Or, in some cases, their lack thereof. Shirky’s framing of MOOCs as a phenomenon of the open educational resources (OER) movement -- rather than of the online education or instructional technology movements -- comes shortly after Coursera struck a content licensing deal with Antioch University that drew a line on the extent to which the company would allow outsiders to use its resources without paying to do so. The False Promise of the Education Revolution - College, Reinvented. By Scott Carlson and Goldie Blumenstyk Last year, leading lights in for-profit and nonprofit higher education convened in Washington for a conference on private-sector innovation in the industry. The national conversation about dysfunction and disruption in higher education was just heating up, and panelists from start-ups, banking, government, and education waxed enthusiastic about the ways that a traditional college education could be torn down and rebuilt—and about how lots of money could be made along the way.

Clay Shirky's response via comments. Clay Shirky is a big thinker, and I read him because he’s consistently worth reading.

Clay Shirky's response via comments

But he’s not always right – and his thinking (and the flaws in it) is typical of the unquestioning enthusiasm of many thinkers today about technology and higher education. In his recent piece on "Napster, Udacity, and the Academy," for example, Shirky is not only guardedly optimistic about the ways that MOOCs and online education will transform higher education, but he takes for granted that they will, that there is no alternative. Just as inevitably as digital sharing turned the music industry on its head, he pronounces, so it is and will be with digital teaching. Bloggingheads.tv. Shirky, Udacity and the University.

Venture Capital's Massive, Terrible Idea For The Future Of College. Can you go to college on your computer?

Venture Capital's Massive, Terrible Idea For The Future Of College

Some say yes, and others respond with a resounding no. But one thing is for sure: there is a boatload of public money to be vacuumed off an overcrowded, underfunded educational establishment desperate for at least the appearance of a quick fix. Enter Udacity, the foremost provider of Massively Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. Does what's above look like college to you? Or rather, is this how college should look now? Tree Sitting. Clay Shirky observed at the Awl last week that he and I disagree over whether the trend toward MOOCs in higher education is reversible—he says no, and he says that I say yes—and I suppose he’s right, so far as that goes.

Tree Sitting

But I don’t think that goes very far.There were a few cheap shots about “teamsters in tweed” that were worth noting. A lazy trope that depends on the belief that unions are essentially illegitimate, selfish, and retrograde, it’s a sly dig that lets him insinuate without directly asserting that anti-MOOC academics are self-interested and conservative luddites, that we are somehow positioning our own self-interest in opposition to the deep public spirit of Silicon Valley. Clay Shirky: Non Potest Quae Non Manent. Will Online Higher Ed Widen the Income Gap? MarkThoma.

The potential for massive, open, online courses (“MOOCS”) to widen and improve educational opportunities has been widely noted, and many see broadening educational opportunities as a remedy for rising inequality. Some observers even predict that low-cost, quality online education will mean the end of traditional brick and mortar institutions. But traditional colleges are not going away, and the potential of online education to reduce inequality is overrated.

MOOCs – The Opium of the Masses. Universities Abroad Join MOOC Course Projects. Reclaimuc : hahaha @nytimes writes how... NY Times: Online Colleges Are a Sham. The New York Times’ lead editorial on February 19 was a slashing critique of online colleges. The editorial ripped apart the hype and spin about these colleges. Their attrition rates are 90%. And, “courses delivered solely online may be fine for highly skilled, highly motivated people, but they are inappropriate for struggling students who make up a significant portion of college enrollment and who need close contact with instructors to succeed.” Furthermore, research shows the high failure rates at these cyber-institutions: “The research has shown over and over again that community college students who enroll in online courses are significantly more likely to fail or withdraw than those in traditional classes, which means that they spend hard-earned tuition dollars and get nothing in return.

Higher education: our MP3 is the mooc. Fifteen years ago, a research group called The Fraunhofer Institute announced a new digital format for compressing movie files. Clay Shirky is our MP3. Dear Clay, Please stop being wrong about the future of Higher Education. Revolution Hits the Universities. UK universities are wary of getting on board the mooc train. About once a fortnight Matt Robb, senior principal at consulting firm Parthenon, has a conversation with a financier who wants to inject serious finance into a British university. This could be huge... Moocs are already big - in reach and in hype - and are predicted to explode. Zoë Corbyn checks in to learn if they are more than just a novelty and to find out what it’s like to teach a class of 38,000 Kristin Sainani, clinical assistant professor in health policy at Stanford University, has just finished teaching her most popular course ever.

The Single Most Important Experiment in Higher Education - Jordan Weissmann. Online education platform Coursera wants to drag elite education into the 21st century. Top US universities put their reputations online. Rushkoff: Online courses need human element to educate. Online courses are proliferating, says Douglas Rushkoff, but will really succeed when they bring humanity to learning process Douglas Rushkoff: Education is under threat, but online computer courses are not to blameHe says education's value hard to measure; is it for making money or being engaged? He says Massive Open Online Courses lack human exchange with teachersRushkoff: MOOCs should bring together people to share studies, maintain education's humanity. Faculty involved in MOOCs may be making rope for professional hangings. Arizona St. and Knewton's grand experiment with adaptive learning.

Stop me if you already know this one. You are explaining how to solve quadratic equations to a classroom full of 18-year-olds. Moody's report calls into question all traditional university revenue sources. Venture Capital's Massive, Terrible Idea For The Future Of College. What is the theory that underpins our moocs? If you’re even casually aware of what is happening in higher education, you’ve likely heard of massive open online courses (MOOCs). Duplication theory of educational value. MOOCs are really a platform. Four Barriers That MOOCs Must Overcome To Build a Sustainable Model. Are MOOCs becoming mechanisms for international competition in global higher ed? MOOCs are a fundamental misperception of how teaching works. Death of the lecture theatre.

Breakthrough: credits for MOOCs.

The Netherlands & MOOC's

MOOC Articles. Timeline2012 MOOC's. Quality Control in MOOCs. Coursera forced to call off a MOOC amid complaints about the course. Memo to Trustees re: Thomas Friedman’s ‘Revolution Hits the Universities’ Revolution Hits the Universities. Beware of the High Cost of 'Free' Online Courses. Qui_oui : Coursera only wants courses... Coursera commits to admitting only elite universities. Public_uni : FutureLearn operates similarly... Half the professoriate will kill the other half for free.

California SB 520 fact sheet. CFA statement regarding the Senate Bill 520 (Senator Steinberg) - California Faculty Association. California educational factions eye plan to offer MOOC credit at public colleges. California academic leaders oppose outsourcing plan. Are university lectures doomed? EUA: MOOCs are overrated. Scienceguide: MOOCs are all about access. Anka Mulder": MOOCs: bad? or the next best thing since sliced bread? ScienceGuide: The silver bullet of education? ScienceGuide: Bussemaker kijkt naar MOOCs. ANS: Bussemaker ziet heil in MOOCs.

Betrayal of the Learned (Trahaison des Clercs): Part II. De universiteit van morgen: een gids in online cursussen wereldwijd - NRC. De universiteit van morgen. FreezePage: De universiteit van morgen.