By Barbara Fister. So, Facebook would like to strike deals with news organizations like The New York Times and Buzzfeed to host their content within the enclosed world of Facebook. The articles will load a few seconds faster, and apparently those seconds are money. Though the details of the deals are not public, it seems the news organizations will split some sort of revenue from this arrangement (earned mysteriously from those ads which we have grown so good at ignoring) and Facebook will have exclusive spying rights. Read more...
A Global Online Course Gets Locally Grounded
By Michael Knipper and Christine Hofstetter. In Spring 2014, 30 medical students at Giessen Medical School in Germany finished the first edition of the HarvardX massive open online course (MOOC) “Global Health: Case Studies from a Biosocial Perspective” (SW25x), and proudly received two certificates: one issued by HarvardX for independent completion of the MOOC and a second acknowledging this course within the regular Global Health curriculum of their home university. More...
Dropouts, Grads, and Terrible Counting
What Work Looks Like
Bring Your Own Device
There’s a reason for that. But it’s frustrating both for students and for colleges. It’s frustrating for students because sometimes they can’t get the time they need on a computer to do a good job writing and rewriting a paper. Read more...
That Awkward Moment
I’m hoping my wise and worldly readers will have a suggestion for a good response.
We were talking about the implications of more classes moving to OER. Most of the implications are positive: less debt for students, everyone has the textbook on day one of class, and the like. Read more...
Criticism vs. Attack
By Joshua Kim. That two reviews of Kevin Carey’s The End of College were both published on the same day on IHE was not planned. My review Dear Kevin: 5 Challenges to “The End of College”, and the review by Audrey Watters and Sara Goldrick-Rab Techno Fantasies, arrived without coordination. Read more...
Dear Kevin: 5 Challenges to “The End of College”
By Joshua Kim. I just finished The End of College. I’ve been recommending your book everywhere I go. Lots of people seem to be reading it. Just so you know, I bought both the Kindle version and the Audible version. Do you know why your publisher decided not to make your book Whispersync enabled?
What I love about your book is that it will generate some much needed conversations on our campuses. Read more...
The Death of the Informational Meeting
By Joshua Kim. I’ve been picking up weak signals that meeting culture is changing. There seems to be less tolerance for bad meetings. Nobody wants to devote their precious time to face-to-face meetings if the task could have been accomplished digitally and asynchronously. Meeting practice seems to be finally catching up with meeting understanding. Read more...
The Streaming March Madness Class Button
By Joshua Kim. I had 3 reaction when I saw the "Class" button on the streaming March Madness site.
This button quickly switches the streaming basketball game to a fake learning management system (LMS). The Class button is now one of the options for the “Boss Button” - with other options being “Work” (a pretend PowerPoint) and “Home” (a fake search box). Read more...