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Ted O'Neill

The False Promise of the Education Revolution - College, Reinvented - The Chronicle of ... - 1 views

chronicle.com/...136305

mooc university crisis

shared by Ted O'Neill on 12 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • The pundits and disrupters, many of whom enjoyed liberal-arts educations at elite colleges, herald a revolution in higher education that is not for people like them or their children, but for others: less-wealthy, less-prepared students who are increasingly cut off from the dream of a traditional college education.
  • David Stavens, a founder of the MOOC provider Udacity, as conceding that "there's a magic that goes on inside a university campus that, if you can afford to live inside that bubble, is wonderful."
  • "The whole MOOC thing is mass psychosis," a case of people "just throwing spaghetti against the wall" to see what sticks, says Peter J. Stokes, executive director for postsecondary innovation at Northeastern's College of Professional Studies. His job is to study the effectiveness of ideas that are emerging or already in practice.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • But "innovation is not about gadgets," says Mr. Stokes. "It's not about eureka moments. ... It's about continuous evaluation."
  • the gap between the country's rich and poor widened during the recession, choking off employment opportunities for many recent graduates.
  • Here's the cruel part: The students from the bottom tier are often the ones who need face-to-face instruction most of all.
  • "The idea that they can have better education and more access at lower cost through massive online courses is just preposterous," says Patricia A. McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University. Seventy percent of her students are eligible for Pell Grants, and 50 percent come from the broken District of Columbia school system.
  • But the reinvention conversation has had a "tech guy" fixation on mere content delivery, she says. "It reveals a lack of understanding of what it takes to make the student actually learn the content and do something with it."
  • "To champion something as trivial as MOOC's in place of established higher education is to ignore the day-care centers, the hospitals, the public health clinics, the teacher-training institutes, the athletic facilities, and all of the other ways that universities enhance communities, energize cities, spread wealth, and enlighten citizens,"
Ted O'Neill

Citing disappointing student outcomes, San Jose State pauses work with Udacity | Inside... - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...jose-state-pauses-work-udacity

MOOC cMOOC Udacity SJSU fail

shared by Ted O'Neill on 22 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • After six months of high-profile experimentation, San Jose State University plans to “pause” its work with Udacity, a company that promises to deliver low-cost, high-quality online education to the masses.
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 22 Jul 13
       
      "Promises" but has now demonstrably failed to deliver.
  • San Jose State Provost Ellen Junn said disappointing student performance will prompt the university to stop offering online classes with Udacity this fall as part of a "short breather." Junn wants to spend the fall going over the results and talking with faculty members about the university’s online experimentation, which extends beyond the Udacity partnership and has proved somewhat controversial. She said the plan is to start working with Udacity again in spring 2014.
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 22 Jul 13
       
      Let's see how that reboot works. I doubt it comes back at the IIRC 150USD per pupil mark.
  • Preliminary findings from the spring semester suggest students in the online Udacity courses, which were developed jointly with San Jose State faculty, do not fare as well as students who attended normal classes -- though Junn cautioned against reading too much into the comparison, given the significant differences in the student populations.
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 22 Jul 13
       
      Right. Bad planning in selection of student groups for this program. MOOCs require autonomous, skilled learners.
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  • A copy of that internal presentation, which Junn repeatedly emphasized was preliminary, was obtained this week by Inside Higher Ed from the California Faculty Association. According to the preliminary presentation, 74 percent or more of the students in traditional classes passed, while no more than 51 percent of Udacity students passed any of the three courses.
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 22 Jul 13
       
      Pretty stark difference.
  • The courses were also put together in a rush. That’s apparently because of the timing of the deal with Udacity. The pilot project was announced a fortnight before classes started. (Like other similar deals, it was also the result of a no-bid contract.) The deal came together at the highest levels: On June 16, 2012, Brown e-mailed and called Thrun to talk about how Udacity could help California's higher education systems. “We need your help,” Brown said, according to Thrun. But, because of the haste, faculty were building the courses on the fly. Not only was this a “recipe for insanity,” Junn said, but faculty did not have a lot of time to watch how students were doing in the courses because the faculty were busy trying to finish them. It took about 400 hours to build a course, though the courses are designed to be reused.
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 22 Jul 13
       
      Incredibly bad pedagogy. That's what one gets when you allow the edtech bubble to drive educational decisions and take teaching out of the hands of faculty.
  • Another factor in the disappointing outcomes may have been the students themselves. The courses included at-risk students, high school students and San Jose State students who had already failed a remedial math course.
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 22 Jul 13
       
      Duh.
  • Student performance data from the San Jose State/Udacity courses are expected to be released in coming weeks.
    • Ted O'Neill
      Ted O'Neill on 22 Jul 13
       
      That original report leaked to IHED must be pretty damning if it will take weeks to edit it for release
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