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Javier E

Harvard and M.I.T. Offer Free Online Courses - NYTimes.com - 2 views

www.nytimes.com/...offer-free-online-courses.html

online learning harvard

shared by Javier E on 03 May 12 - Cached
  • Harvard and M.I.T. have a rival — they are not the only elite universities planning to offer free massively open online courses, or MOOCs, as they are known. This month, Stanford, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan announced their partnership with a new commercial company, Coursera, with $16 million in venture capital.
  • The technology for online education, with video lesson segments, embedded quizzes, immediate feedback and student-paced learning, is evolving so quickly that those in the new ventures say the offerings are still experimental.
  • M.I.T. and Harvard officials said they would use the new online platform not just to build a global community of online learners, but also to research teaching methods and technologies.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • if I were president of a mid-tier university, I would be looking over my shoulder very nervously right now, because if a leading university offers a free circuits course, it becomes a real question whether other universities need to develop a circuits course.”
  • The edX project will include not only engineering courses, in which computer grading is relatively simple, but also humanities courses, in which essays might be graded through crowd-sourcing, or assessed with natural-language software. Coursera will also offer free humanities courses in which grading will be done by peers.
  • “What faculty don’t want to do is just take something off the shelf that’s somebody else’s and teach it, any more than they would take a textbook, start on Page 1, and end with the last chapter,” he said. “What’s still missing is an online platform that gives faculty the capacity to customize the content of their own highly interactive courses.”
  • anonymous on 11 May 12
     
    I think that Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Princeton, UP, and Michigan have a great idea in establishing these free online courses. When such high level courses are provided online and for free, there really is no excuse not to pursue greater knowledge. The only ingredient not provided is self-motivation. After both sites, Coursera seems to be developing much more rapidly then edX. Coursera is constantly updating their site with new courses. Also, after sifting through a few of the courses offered, I noticed that many teachers are willing to stream some online students in through video conferencing. These online students can virtually interact with their counterparts in the classroom at the given elite university. In other words, the intimate relationship found through interacting with other students and professors in a classroom setting is not completely lost.
Javier E

Public Universities See Familiar Fight at Virginia - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...amiliar-fight-at-virginia.html

education tech online risk threat model University

shared by Javier E on 26 Jun 12 - Cached
  • tanford, M.I.T. and other universities that have, just in the last year, begun to offer “massive open online courses,” or MOOCs, free to anyone with an Internet connection, carving out new territory in an area that most universities are just beginning to explore.
  • the sheer scale of the new online courses has jolted every leading university into thinking about how online learning may transform higher education: Will there be much demand for each university to develop its own courses, when a state-of-the-art version from a prestigious university is available online? Will employers accept a set of certificates from online courses as a traditional diploma? Will families pay ever-higher tuition if a free online alternative exists? Does it make sense for universities to invest in brick-and-mortar branch campuses, in the United States or abroad, when they can so easily take courses to students everywhere via the Internet?
Javier E

'You Have to Know History to Actually Teach It' - David Cutler - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...282957

teaching history

shared by Javier E on 11 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • the number one thing is to have a real passion for your subject and to be able to convey that to your students. Obviously the content is important, but that's not as unusual as being able to really convey why you think history is important.
  • I'm strongly in favor of students knowing the facts of history, not just memorizing or having it drilled into their heads.
  • also I think what I see in college students, that seems to be lacking at least when they come into college, is writing experience. In other words, being able to write that little essay with an argument.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • the very selection of what is a fact, or what is important as a fact, is itself based on an interpretation. You can't just separate fact and interpretation quite as simply as many people seem to think. I would love to see students get a little more experience in trying to write history, and trying to understand why historical interpretation changes over time.
  • I'm less interested in pedagogical approaches than the training of the teacher, the ability of the teacher, the knowledge of the teacher, and the teacher's ability to inspire students by conveying his or her own enthusiasm for the subject.
  • My experience as a teacher and as a student long ago, is that there is no substitute for a good teacher. I don't care what bells and whistles that you're using, it's the teacher in the classroom. That's why I'm a little skeptical about MOOCs, online education. I'm old-fashioned enough to believe that the presence of a teacher is actually critical to learning.
  • The first thing I would say is that we have to get away from the idea that any old person can teach history.
  • They wouldn't put him in a French course, or a physics course. The number-one thing is, you have to know history to actually teach it. That seems like an obvious point, but sometimes it's ignored in schools. Even more than that, I think it's important that people who are teaching history do have training in history. A lot of times people have education degrees, which have not actually provided them with a lot of training in the subject. They know a lot about methodology. [That’s] important, but as I say, the key thing is really to love the subject, to be able to convey that to your students, and if you can do that, I think you'll be a great teacher.
Javier E

BBC Offering Archives for World War I Courses - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...s-for-world-war-i-courses.html

WWI online learning MOOC UK BBC

shared by Javier E on 28 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • The BBC has announced it will collaborate with four British universities to offer online courses about World War I, beginning in October.
  • will focus on trauma and memory, heroism in industrialized warfare, early military aviation and how the war — and the ensuing peace — changed the world.
  • The BBC, founded just four years after the end of the war, will curate its archives to bring relevant contemporary material to the courses.
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