HGSET561

Coursera announced Signature Track, a new option that will give students in select classes the opportunity to earn a Verified Certificate for completing their Coursera course. 30-100$ per course. Signature Track offers: Identity Verification. Verified Certificates. Sharable Course Records.

a youtube video on cheating prevention

Ted talks are interesting and useful at times in the classroom but will students automatically make connections to class content?  This annotating tool enables either instructors or students to make explicit connections or commentary and share the end product.  

Stanford's new online course on blended learning environments.

I think this is a really important experiment. Venturelab is a MOOC that is using a teams based model. Participants fill out assessments which are used to "build" teams. Team members rate each other's work. Interesting to see how they progress.

Our sister course at Stanford is called "Educations Digital Future". The masters students of EDUC 403x were asked to compile a collection of "white papers" summarizing the major themes of the course. They are linked here and are an interesting comparison to "Transforming Education..". Many of their discussions, hopes and concerns were similar to those voiced in our class. There is

Interview with Stanford's first vice provost of online learning

Adrian Sannier is VP of Product at Pearson, and gives a talk at Stanford's "Education's Digital Future" conference about "Rock Star Teachers" who use social media and online platforms to cater to hundreds of thousands of students.

This builds on Emily's post from the weekend with s bit more detail on one of standford's alternative online platforms. The venture lab platform is not the standard mooc idea, but sounds like they built in more collaboration and teamwork features. So maybe now moocs can reach a wider audience with non-math / science interests?

"Omnihours enables you to schedule video-chat meetings with students in your MOOC class. A Linkedin account is required for registration."

A year in review about MOOCs

This article links to the contract between Coursera and the University of Michigan, mentioning the monetization possibilities, among others. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/400864-coursera-fully-executed-agreement.html#document/p40

""No one's got the model that's going to work yet," said James Grimmelmann, a New York Law School professor who specializes in computer and Internet law. "I expect all the current ventures to fail, because the expectations are too high. People think something will catch on like wildfire. But more likely, it's maybe a decade later that somebody figures out how to do it and make money." "

The NYC Department of Education is challenging software developers to submit apps and games that enhance teaching, learning, and engagement for NYC middle schools. I thought this might interest folks working on app or startup ideas.

"The intuitive software platform for EV3 is based on National Instruments LabVIEW™ graphical programming software, and includes new data-logging capabilities that allow students to collect, graph, and calculate their data."