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"The paper's authors measured two types of goal setting, performance based and task based. After surveying close to 4,000 college students in two field experiments, they found that performance-based goals -- setting a goal to earn a certain grade in the class used for the survey -- didn't have a statistically significant effect on whether a student actually got that grade. But when students set their goals on the tasks required to earn those grades, they performed better over all, even though that wasn't explicitly their goal."

"The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) confers numerous rights upon data subjects who are located in the EU, including the "right to be forgotten." It also requires that covered organizations put significant processes and safeguards into place regarding the collection, use, and processing of personal data of data subjects located in the EU. Failure to comply with GDPR can result in an enforcement action and significant financial penalties. Due to both the borderless application of GDPR and the concept of territoriality, the regulation has broad implications for organizations around the globe, including US colleges and universities."

"The program kicks off today with two curriculums, Business or Supply Chain Management for associate and bachelor's degrees with additional curriculums to follow at three non-profit universities: University of Florida which is ranked #17 in the nation for its business school by U.S. News and World Report, Brandman University and Bellevue University. The five-year long program will include what Carlson calls "having a personal coach for education" from the application process up through graduation."

"Homelessness has caused Jasmine to give up on some dreams. She wants a college education, so that means giving up a home."

"Students are unknowingly ensnared in The Maze when they first stop into the college bookstore to collect required books prior to the start of classes. They may be shell-shocked by the prices, but feel they have no alternative but to purchase the materials."

"A study released last week found that students who start college less well-prepared can struggle in online courses, and that in-person courses would be better for them academically. "

"New World of Work provides free lessons and videos to help instructors and trainers teach 21st Century College/Career Ready Skills"

"On Tuesday, the publishing powerhouse announced a partnership with Alchemie, an educational app startup that gamifies learning, to develop augmented reality apps for college-level chemistry courses through a National Science Foundation research grant."

Abandon LMS at Universities?

I think there is still a need for LMSs, but not all the features of the LMS. We need a gradebook, a quiz engine, and a private massaging/forum system for convenience and compliance. Everything else can be done elsewhere, as long as instructors are willing to open up their course materials. My $0.02.

Dale J. Stephens is a Penguin author, Thiel Fellow, and education activist. He founded UnCollege in January 2011 because we are paying too much for university and learning too little.

"To nudge students toward job-friendly degrees, the governor's task force on higher education suggested recently that university tuition rates be frozen for three years for majors in "strategic areas," which would vary depending on supply and demand. An undergraduate student would pay less for a degree in engineering or biotechnology - whose classes are among the most expensive for universities - than for a degree in history or psychology."

"Prior Learning Assessment, or PLA, is a little-discussed strategy to facilitate time-to-degree, particularly for non-traditional students. The concept is to set up the structure and processes to evaluate corporate training from employment, military training, civic responsibilities, travel, and independent study and award academic credit from these out-of-the-classroom learning situations. As the higher education population diversifies with much higher percentages of working adults, PLA can be an important factor in reducing total cost and time-to-degree."

DALE EDWIN MURRAY When campus president Wallace Loh walked into Juan Uriagereka's office last August, he got right to the point. "We need courses for this thing - yesterday!" Uriagereka, associate provost for faculty affairs at the University of Maryland in College Park, knew exactly what his boss meant.

"It is best summed up by the mantra from the Harvard education expert Tony Wagner that the world doesn't care anymore what you know; all it cares "is what you can do with what you know." And since jobs are evolving so quickly, with so many new tools, a bachelor's degree is no longer considered an adequate proxy by employers for your ability to do a particular job - and, therefore, be hired."

My admission wasn't because of a bad episode. And it wasn't that I was experiencing my first taste of burnout (that would come later). Rather, my discomfort with teaching stemmed from the broad experience I was gaining in the classroom. My Midwestern state university required teaching assistants to lead four 50-minute tutorials each week for a large introductory course. I had four semesters of that behind me, and two small courses that I taught on my own during summers.

This Degree of Freedom web site will document my one-year experiment attempting to take all of the courses needed to learn the equivalent of what I'd get from a liberal arts Bachelors Degree entirely through free, online resources (with a focus on the Massive Open Online Classes, or MOOCs that have been in the news lately).

As "MOOC mania" completely overshadows the Open Education Resource (OER) initiative of UNESCO and the Hewlett Foundation, a potentially valuable point is being overlooked. The MOOC format, as it exists today, seems especially inappropriate for degree completion by a traditional age student (18-24). It may even be a challenge for the older, post- traditional student as the issue of how learning is to be validated still has most institutions questioning the credit worthiness of such offerings.