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"March 19, 2013, 1:00 pm By Prof. Hacker [This is a guest post by Lisa Rhody, who works for the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University as the project manager for WebWise 2013....] From early posts about scholarly uses of social media to more recent entries on its usefulness for improving student engagement, there seems to be a general consensus among ProfHacker writers that the use of social media promotes the widening of scholarly networks. Keeping in mind that online social networks extend beyond the obvious Twitter and Facebook-blogs, podcasts, wikis, and photo/video sharing sites are a few other forms of social media-the vexing question to answer has been how to quantify the scope or significance of one's participation in social media to a wider scholarly conversation."

"March 20, 2013, 4:55 am By Steve Kolowich The State University of New York's Board of Trustees on Tuesday endorsed an ambitious vision for how SUNY might use prior-learning assessment, competency-based programs, and massive open online courses to help students finish their degrees in less time, for less money. The plan calls for "new and expanded online programs" that "include options for time-shortened degree completion." In particular, the board proposed a huge expansion the prior-learning assessment programs offered by SUNY's Empire State College. The system will also push its top faculty members to build MOOCs designed so that certain students who do well in the courses might be eligible for SUNY credit. Ultimately, the system wants to add 100,000 enrollments within three years, according to a news release."

"April 3, 2013, 12:43 pm By Karen Head ...The preparation of a MOOC, unlike that of a traditional course, requires working with videographers, instructional designers, IT specialists, and platform specialists. For many MOOCs this means that an instructor and a teaching assistant must fill most of those support roles. In fact, one of my colleagues who taught a MOOC actually built a recording studio in the basement of his home. Even with our team of 19, we still needed several other people to provide support. We now also have an internal project manager to coordinate our videography needs. I'm very thankful to have these people helping us. ..."