Experiential eLearning

EdX and MOOCs

Harvard’s announcement this month that it was joining forces with MITx to launch EdX, a series of (free and paid) openly-available online courses, fueled an already buzzing trend in higher education:  MOOCs, or massively open online courses.   The move is being portrayed in a variety of ways – the promise of democratizing higher education and potentially disrupting, or at least fundamentally altering the structure and quality of, online learning and even face-to-face classroom education.   Here’s a look into the MOOC evolution and how EdX fits into the picture.

The Future of Business Education

I was privileged to be invited to a “Future of Business Education” conference hosted by the Acton MBA program in Austin, Texas, this past Fall.  Jeff Sandefer, founder of the Acton MBA in Entrepreneurship and an entrepreneur, educational innovator, and philanthropist, assembled a group of entrepreneurs and thought leaders in business education to discuss some of the thornier issues facing this constituency today.  It was a provocative and inspiring few days and I’ll try and detail some of the discussion here.

The Digital Revolution and Higher Education

The Pew Research Center issued a report entitled The Digital Revolution and Higher Education (report available online and in PDF format here), with the tagline "College Presidents, Public Differ on Value of Online Learning".  The Center is a non-partisan 'fact tank' that does not make policy recommendations, but rather "collects information and disseminates it in an understandable and analytical way, rather than producing expert opinion on policy subjects".  Here's a brief overview of the report's Executive Summary.

Open Education

I'm currently enrolled in a hybrid classroom/online course called Open Education Practice and Potential in Harvard University's Division of Continuing Education.  The course is taught by Vijay Kumar, Senior Associate Dean and Director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Office of Educational Innovation and Technology (bio) and Brandon Muramatsu, Senior IT Consultant in the same MIT office.  Both are incredibly accomplished learning technologists dedicated to the "Open Education" movement -- a movement aimed at improving education access and quality by enabling educators to develop, use, re-use, and share digital learning resources.  Although the class isn't over yet and I'm by no means fully educated on this expansive topic, I thought I'd make an attempt to describe this movement and detail just a few of its components that challenge the conventional educational content landscape.

Private Sector Colleges & Universities

The debate continues about the academic efficacy and student adoption/retention practices associated with "private sector" colleges and universities.  Also known as "proprietary" and "for-profit" education and sometimes referred to as the "career college" market, this is a growing segment within the higher education landscape both in terms of numbers of students and educational dollars.  I've attempted an overview of the segment that includes the recent/ongoing political controversy as well as insights into their program design practices that, for some of these institutions, promise real educational reform and opportunity for otherwise neglected student populations.