Group items tagged

ought to write a companion book -- a sequel to The End of College -- called The End of Sex. The argument would go like this: Disruptive innovations in virtual technologies everywhere are rendering residential sex obsolete. Match.com is clearly more efficient than old, clumsy courtship rituals, and improved algorithms will obviate the need entirely for bar hopping. Virtual sex is disease-free and quantifiable. Advancements in robotics, tactile interactivity, customizable AI, and neuro-scientific sensory mapping are all conspiring to supplant old-school face-to-face sexuality. Virtual sex is market-friendly and doesn't rely on unfair status credentials. Carey will probably make good money if he puts forth The End of Sex book, and he'll be able to laugh at stodgy PhDs all the way to the bank.

discounts the value of face-to-face human relations and overlooks the inherent (and irreplaceable) joy of such encounters. Many (we'd say most) professors and students do what they do, not because they are motivated primarily by status or job concerns, but because they love learning and learning with others.

MOOC platform providers are also “discovering” that students want to pay for credentials and not learning experiences. This means that many of those companies are tying their fortunes to the issuing of certificates and badge-like credentials. This business model will succeed as long as MOOCs are a tiny fraction of their partner university’s offerings but will run into significant headwinds once adoption grows and they compete more directly with the core institutional financial models.

“scalable educational experiences.”

bally connected and mixed-modality learning communities can be enhanced and accelerated by MOOC platforms and, more importantly, new thinking. Such possibilities more accurately reflect the thinking of the earliest MOOC pioneers, George Siemens and Steven Downes. These new possibilities will take advantage of the best of what we can do in physical and virtual spaces. Expect to see new learning genres and expanded access to the deep knowledge generated by our great universities.

a lack of transparency in the current credentialing maze has fueled the confusion and created a buyer-beware environment.

When every credential is unique to its issuer and impossible to compare with others, they all lose their value to job seekers and employers.

Funded by Lumina Foundation, the initiative will develop common terms for describing key features of credentials; create a voluntary, web-based registry for sharing the resulting information; and test practical apps (software applications) for employers, students, educators, and other credential stakeholders.

David Schejba

dean of continuing education, outreach and e-learning at the University of Wisconsin-Extension

his career has been driven by a desire to make education flexible, affordable and accessible for working adults, some of whom have degrees and are looking for new skills, some of whom have no prior postsecondary experience, but all of whom have real commitments outside of schooling