Thinking and Linking by Joanne Jacobs
When a college athlete fails or drops a class, there’s a quick, easy, low-cost way to stay eligible: An Oklahoma community college offers two-week, three-credit online courses for $387. As the NCAA raises academic requirements, more athletes are turning to online credit mills.
Online courses offer All-You-Can-Eat Education for $30 a Month.
It’s illegal to offer free, online courses in Minnesota, state education officials have told Coursera, which partners with universities to provide massive open online courses, or MOOC’s. Under state law, a degree-granting institution must pay get state authorization and pay a registration fee to offer instruction.
It’s a matter of ”consumer protection for students,” Tricia Grimes, a policy analyst for the state’s Office of Higher Education, told the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Stanford, Columbia, Michigan, et al don’t charge students for Coursera courses and don’t offer degrees to MOOC students. That doesn’t matter, another official tells Slate. Students can’t waste their money, but they might waste their time in a non-authorized course, says George Roedler, manager of institutional registration and licensing at the Minnesota Office of Higher Education.
Coursera added a terms of service notice telling Minnesotans not to do any learning, unless they go out of state. I predict ridicule will lead to a MOOC exception very quickly.
Update: Ridicule works! Minnesota education officials have issued a statement saying free higher ed doesn’t require state approval.
More than 2 million K-12 students are enrolled in online courses and that’s projected to hit 10 million by 2014. Can Digital Learning Transform Education? asks Education Next.
First, We Need a Brand New K-12 System, writes Chester Finn, Jr., president of the Fordham Institute and editor of Education Reform for the Digital Era.
“Local districts and their school boards want to control online learning, Finn writes.
Yet leaving districts and their boards in charge of digital instruction will retard innovation, entrepreneurship, collaboration, and smart competition. It will raise costs; undermine efficiency; block rich instructional options; restrict school choice and parental influence; and strengthen the hand of other interest groups, including but not limited to already too-powerful teachers unions.
Unions are “determined to prevent digital learning from shrinking their ranks or weakening their power bases.”
In California, for example, the state teachers union’s model contract requires that: ”No employee shall be displaced because of distance learning or other educational technology.”
. . . Elsewhere, unions have ensured that class-size limits nonsensically apply to online schools.
As Digital Learning Draws New Users, Transformation Will Occur, counters Michael Horn, executive director of education at the Innosight Institute.
. . . moving away from seat-time requirements toward a competency-based system, in which students advance upon mastery of a concept or skill, is critical to unleashing the full power of digital learning. But because today’s education system was modeled after a factory, time rather than learning is the primary unit of measure.
“Education regulations for the digital-learning world of tomorrow will almost certainly be implemented piecemeal,” Horn concludes. Online learning will be held to a higher standard at first.
Instead of earning credits for “seat time,” colleges are offering degrees based on showing competency – usually by doing well on a test. Southern New Hampshire University is partnering with employers on a $5,000 online, competency-based associate degree.
Connecticut’s community college presidents are worried about a new state law that lets unprepared students skip remediation and take college-level classes. Those who resist — or all 12 presidents, depending on who you believe — have been told to apply for “expedited termination” by the end of the month.
With 470,000 students on community college wait lists in California, UniversityNow, a “social venture” in San Francisco, is offering online general-education classes at community college prices. UNow recently bought accredited (though on probation) Patten University, which will issue what should be transferable credits.
Meanwhile, one community college in California is looking for donors to ”sponsor” classes the college can’t afford to teach.
Colleges aren’t good at remedial education, writes Ohio University economist Richard Vedder. Few remedial students go on to earn a degree. Colleges should outsource remediation and concentrate on college-level instruction.
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) were developed for motivated, independent learners. Now the Gates Foundation is funding proposals to create MOOCs for remedial students.
Can Technology Replace Teachers? As part of a series of layoffs and salary cuts, Eagle County, Colorado’s school district replaced three French and German teachers with online instruction, reports Ed Week. Nobody’s arguing the online courses are just as good, but enrollments were high enough to justify keeping the teachers.
Technology can help teachers do more, not serve as a replacement, writes Coach G.
Kentuckians can complete self-paced, online modules in as little as three weeks, earning community college credits that can be “stacked” to earn vocational certificates or associate degrees. Learn on Demand is designed for working adults, but on-campus students are signing up too.
Also on Community College Spotlight: The real trouble with online education is that critics won’t give it a chance.
Massive Open Online Courses are the next big thing for learners who don’t need college credit.
Recent Comments