Last week the Brookings Institute published an article in its Economic Studies: Evidence Speaks series titled “Promises and pitfalls in online learning,” by Eric Bettinger and Susanna Loeb of Stanford University. The article is a condensed summary of a lengthier draft research paper, “Changing Distributions: How Online College Classes Alter Student and Professor Performance” that was supported by the Stanford Center for Education and Policy Analysis (CEPA). More...
One trend that struck me as new at the recent IMS Global and ASU/GSV conferences was a ramping up of activity around digital badges. At the moment, they seem to be filling in cracks that more formal credentials don’t cover. While there are some efforts to convert formal certificates and (more rarely) degree programs into stackable micro-credentials, those activities are mostly happening around the edges at the moment. More...
In 2005, some colleagues and I had been tasked with identifying a single LMS that could serve the needs of all 64 campuses of the State University of New York—from Adirondack Community College to SUNY Stony Brook to the two medical schools. We came to the conclusion that no single LMS at the time could meet such diverse needs. We proposed instead that SUNY should build a modular system from which each campus, and indeed each educator, could create their own fit-for-purpose digital learning environment. We called this idea the Learning Management Operating System, or LMOS. More...
Ten Iraqi universities closed their doors as the Islamic State seized swaths of northwestern Iraq three years ago. More...
The Mshatta Façade is among myriad artifacts from the ancient Islamic world that draws more than 700,000 visitors to the Pergamon Museum in this German city every year. More...
As studies go, they don’t get much more momentous than the one published in Nature last month. Its authors describe how they discovered and analyzed what turned out to be the world’s oldest human remains in Morocco. More...
New research from Qatar University has documented the concentration of microplastics in the Gulf’s seawaters for the first time. It’s part of a worldwide trend to catalogue the global distribution of these tiny plastics, which mainly come from cosmetic products. More...
Saif Hassan, 20, completed vocational high school last year, with a specialization in carpentry and decorating. Although he wanted to pursue an advanced degree in the same profession, he was unable to do so. More...
Masoud Burhani, a 30-year-old Afghan refugee, met with officials at the ministry of education here recently to join an innovative new project supporting higher education for refugees. More...
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