By Steve Kolowich. The news media’s appetite for MOOC stories has been insatiable. So when the University of Pennsylvania sent an email inviting several hundred education reporters to a seminar on massive open online courses, it anticipated a healthy turnout. But as the catering deadline approached at the National Press Club, in Washington, organizers realized that they had barely enough registered attendees to justify a platter of finger food. More...
By Steve Kolowich. Udacity hopes the certificates it offers to people who complete its massive open online courses are worth something. Now the company plans to charge students accordingly. The company, one of the big three MOOC providers, said on Wednesday that it would no longer give learners the opportunity to earn free, “non-identity-verified” certificates. People will still be able to view Udacity’s online-course materials without paying, but those who want a credential will have to open their wallets. More...
By Jennifer Howard. Like most youngsters, the Digital Public Library of America has been growing fast. Officially a year old, it now encompasses more than seven million items, three times what it started with 12 months ago. More...
By Marc Parry. In February, Twitter announced a new program offering researchers the chance to get free data for their studies. Apparently the idea has broad appeal: The company received 1,300 proposals from more than 60 countries, according to a blog post revealing the six institutions that have won the first round of grants. More...
By Steve Kolowich. When the machines take over, much will change. But perhaps not the exquisite frustrations of a halting philosophical debate. Researchers at Cornell University’s Creative Machines Lab have demonstrated this by putting two artificially intelligent avatars in conversation with one another. The avatars, called Cleverbots, are sophisticated versions of the classic Eliza program, developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1960s. The Cornell researchers—two doctoral students and an associate professor—downloaded the Cleverbot, then used additional software to render them as separate avatars that could talk out loud. More...
By Goldie Blumenstyk. A new for-profit education organization, designed to give more academic and financial control to the adjunct instructors who teach its online courses, has just won approval from the state of Vermont to operate. The Vermont State Board of Education’s approval of Oplerno (the company’s name stands for “open learning organization”) means that its courses can qualify for credit at colleges and universities, at the institutions’ discretion. More...
By Peter Schmidt. Top officials of the American Association of University Professors have fended off an election challenge from a slate of candidates who had accused them of being too focused on union organizing.
In an election that represented just the latest in a series of skirmishes over the AAUP’s direction, the incumbent slate prevailed in all four races for the association’s top offices, according to voting results released on Thursday. More...
By Benjamin Mueller. A religious-studies instructor at Missouri State University who invited a former Ku Klux Klan leader to speak to his class two years ago is drawing scrutiny after that same man became the sole suspect in shootings that killed three people at Jewish centers in the Kansas City area on Sunday.
The instructor, David Embree, defended his decision in a statement released on Monday, saying that he wanted to educate his students on white supremacist worldviews. More...
By Karin Fischer. International graduate-student trends appear to have hit a reset. For the second year in a row, applications to American graduate schools from India skyrocketed, while those from prospective Chinese students fell. The findings, from a report released on Thursday by the Council of Graduate Schools, turn the trend line of recent years on its head. For the better part of a decade, Chinese graduate applications—and enrollments—have climbed upward, regularly and robustly. More...
By Alexis Garcia. The idea that you have to go to college in order to be a respectable member of the middle class is "kind of weird" to Glenn Reynolds. The professor of law at the University of Tennessee and purveyor of the popular Instapundit blog, says students and parents are starting to rethink the benefits of higher education compared to the enormous costs associated with it. Reynolds sat down with Reason TV to discuss his latest work, The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education From Itself. The book examines the higher education bubble and suggests ways students, parents, and educators can remake the system. More...
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