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The authors lay out four "pillars" of practice, conveniently chosen to form FLIP as an acronym: Flexible environment (Students are allowed a variety of modes of learning and means of assessment) Learning culture (Student-centered communities of inquiry rather than instructor-centered lecture) Intentional content (Basically this means placing content in the most appropriate context - direct instruction prior to class for individual use, video that's accessible to all students, etc.) Professional educator (Being a reflective, accessible instructor who collaborates with other educators and takes responsibility for perfecting one's craft)

discusses some of the politics involved in MOOCS in higher ed.

"I think there is a HUGE disconnect with how things in higher education have always been, and how they need to change today to be relevant. Students don't want to be entertained, they want to be engaged… They need to experience flow. They need to be perplexed."

To find out if it's worth it for you, you'll need to try it yourself. And with the way things are going in many higher-education institutions, chances are if you don't choose this route, you'll be dragged into it anyway. Better to go willingly and get ahead of the curve, instead of kicking and screaming with the masses.

"Legitimate research has determined that student evaluations of professors are biased, and so their "customer ratings" aren't fair. Legitimate research also indicates that while professorial popularity and effectiveness do overlap, one does not immediately signify or correlate with the other. Further, most students don't actually view themselves as customers, because they know how education works and actually want to get one."

Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL). Advancing what works in STEM education

Thanks, Mathieu! This is a great follow-up to Tuesday's Winter Faculty Institute.

"I truly believe that most of my full-time, tenure-track colleagues would rather quit their jobs than teach an online course. And that's a shame, since they are exactly the people who should be helping to set standards for meaningful online education."

It is hard to imagine holding a university-level class today in which students do not engage with the web or social media in one form or another, whether by using Google search, bookmarking or sharing an article, taking an online survey, posting or commenting on a blog, or using e-mail or text messaging. So, what rules should we, as instructors, follow to ensure no legal or Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) issues arise?

"with no existing online programs and a culture unaccustomed to rapid transformation, they weren't prepared for the challenge, Coleman admitted during a session last month at the University Professional, Continuing and Online Education Association's annual meeting. "Wellesley had no understanding of this market," Coleman said. "I'm not really sure that they had a full understanding of what this could be or what they wanted it to be.""

"As any botanist knows, a monoculture is highly susceptible to a single pathogen. A great shakeout is under way, and MOOCs are the logical outgrowth of this push for interchangeable educational delivery. Curricula, faculty, and students are overwhelmingly indistinct, and MOOCs are simply the cheapest way to combine those elements in our economically constrained times."

An article providing an important perspective to consider when promoting or arguing for the MOOC concept.

"Working 24/7 is not the only way to achieve success in academia. There, I've said it. A recent article described the working week of people across academia. This included the science professor who "compensates for the time he spends with his young children in the evening and at weekends by getting up before they do", and the early career researcher who "tries to take at least a half-day off a week". While many colleagues have similar working patterns and are happy (or at least not unhappy) working in this way, I am meeting increasing numbers of promising academics who reject it."

"The big shift: far fewer in-class lectures. Students will watch the lectures on Coursera beginning Monday. "Class will become a time for activities and also teamwork," said Sinnott-Armstrong. He's devised exercises to help on-campus students engage with the concepts in the class, including a college bowl-like competition, a murder mystery night and a scavenger hunt, all to help students develop a deeper understanding of the material presented in the lectures."

As a follow-up to "Come see me at EDUCAUSE," I wanted to share out some resources from my presentations as well as some resources that I gathered at the conference.