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StraighterLine has been recognized as a revolutionary, innovative force in higher education by major news organizations and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Fast Company named StraighterLine one of the 10 Most Innovative Companies in Education , and our students have reported that our college credits have been accepted by hundreds of accredited colleges and universities nationwide.

"New high-tech standardized tests are coming soon to schools across the country, but will these new tests really revolutionize how we measure whether children are learning? The designers of the new tests, which a majority of states plan to adopt in two years, are allowing a sneak peek at sample questions."

"China just began a major education reform effort that is aimed at reducing the importance of standardized testing in determining school quality and including factors such as student engagement, boredom, anxiety, and happiness. It also seeks to cut back on the amount of school work students are given. As scholar Yong Zhao notes in the following post, the approach is the opposite of the education reform path in the United States, which in recent years has increased the importance of test scores for accountability purposes."

"KitchenAid deleted the original tweet and apologized within eight minutes, according to SimplyMeasured and as reported by Mashable. Minutes are an eternity on Twitter, where retweets can spread like wildfire, especially during major news events - and the widely watched presidential debate at the University of Denver saw more than 10 million tweets sent while the two candidates were on stage."

"Coursera has been informed by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education that under Minnesota Statutes (136A.61 to 136A.71), a university cannot offer online courses to Minnesota residents unless the university has received authorization from the State of Minnesota to do so. If you are a resident of Minnesota, you agree that either (1) you will not take courses on Coursera, or (2) for each class that you take, the majority of work you do for the class will be done from outside the State of Minnesota."

What we saw today is what our classrooms will look like once iPads are far cheaper, once digital textbooks can be handed down as easily as physical ones, once teachers of every subject have several educational material options to choose among. For now though, it's important to remember that "new" and "different" always come at a premium. One that the vast majority of us can't afford.

"The large majority of faculty who have taught online courses (79%) say the experience has helped them develop skills and practices that have improved their teaching in the classroom as well as online."

" XMOOC, cMOOC, BOOC, DOCC and SPOC--are you up to speed on all the different flavors of MOOCs? Alex Cusack from MOOCs.com has compiled this handy infographic to help you make sense of the alphabet soup along with major MOOC providers, trends, and student demographics. "

"I included the following question on my usual first day questionnaire: "What is the most important thing I can do to best help you learn, and to do well in this course?" I received responses from 41 out of the 42 students (all junior Met. majors) and those responses will be the topic of discussion."

"At its Android and Chrome event in San Francisco today, Google announced that it is bringing textbooks to the Google Play store so students will be able to purchase and rent their textbooks for their Android devices and for reading on the web."

"If educators wish to keep students in high school and in college, they must plant a better attitude in the former, while recognizing the intransigence of the curriculum in the latter. Boredom is not always something to be avoided. It is to be accepted and worked through."

Part of the reason for that is that we might consider someone skilled if they need little or no documentation to accomplish a certain task. A skilled chef can make a meal without requiring a recipe, for instance, and a skilled network admin can make major changes to production switches and routers without calling up a CLI reference guide to check syntax. A talented chef, on the other hand, may think along different lines and construct an entirely unique dish for which there is no recipe. A talented system administrator may do much the same, assembling various tools in a unique way and devising a method around a problem that hadn't been attempted before. This may require some research and reference instead of rote knowledge, but the end result is something that wouldn't have otherwise existed, and is something for which there are no guidelines.

Whereas I don't believe the majority of businesses will ever become completely freelance or remote (core staff need to be in-house and work in proximity at any company of a certain size; local service-based businesses need people on site, though those can be freelancers), it's entirely plausible that more than half of the American workforce will one day log in or show up every day as independent contractors.

"Hersh believes there is another major factor driving the gap between retention rates in face-to-face programs and those in the rapidly growing world of distance education: the lack of a human touch."

"This research looks closely at claims that ratemyprofessors.com creates a valid measure of teaching effectiveness because student responses are consistent with a learning model. While some evidence for this contention was found in three datasets taken from the site, the majority of the evidence indicates that the instrument is biassed by a halo effect, and creates what most accurately could be called a 'likeability' scale."

With regard to Trend No. 1, 93 percent of the employers surveyed said that "a demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than [a candidate's] undergraduate major." On Trend No. 2, the association's survey found that "more than nine in 10" employers surveyed said it was important that job candidates "demonstrate ethical judgment and integrity; intercultural skills; and the capacity for continued new learning. More than 75 percent of employers say they want more emphasis on five key areas, including critical thinking, complex problem-solving, written and oral communication, and applied knowledge in real-world settings."

"We contend that the real issue - and the one that largely goes unaddressed - is that the majority of people who teach online are given virtually no assistance in learning how to teach online. Professional development for these instructors is limited to lunch 'n' learns, basic learning platform support, and other technology-related resources, but generally fails to expose instructors to the best techniques for online instruction."

"Use of in-class concept questions with clickers can transform an instructor-centered "transmissionist" environment to a more learner-centered constructivist classroom. To compare the effectiveness of three different approaches using clickers, pairs of similar questions were used to monitor student understanding in majors' and nonmajors' genetics courses. After answering the first question individually, students participated in peer discussion only, listened to an instructor explanation only, or engaged in peer discussion followed by instructor explanation, before answering a second question individually. Our results show that the combination of peer discussion followed by instructor explanation improved average student performance substantially when compared with either alone. When gains in learning were analyzed for three ability groups of students (weak, medium, and strong, based on overall clicker performance), all groups benefited most from the combination approach, suggesting that peer discussion and instructor explanation are synergistic in helping students. However, this analysis also revealed that, for the nonmajors, the gains of weak performers using the combination approach were only slightly better than their gains using instructor explanation alone. In contrast, the strong performers in both courses were not helped by the instructor-only approach, emphasizing the importance of peer discussion, even among top-performing students."

"The Chronicle asked five education-technology experts to think about the year ahead and identify major themes at the intersection of education technology and higher education."

Once the MOOC "revolution" got underway, universities, usually slow-moving and tight-fisted institutions, couldn't run fast enough to put their own MOOCs online. And, right now, we're seeing the results. In January alone, 180 MOOCs from major international universities, will get underway. Below we've highlighted some of the courses that intrigued us most, but you can peruse the complete list here and make your own choices."