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.

H20 Free Online Classroom Tools from Harvard’s Berkman Center

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is an “entrepreneurial nonprofit” whose mission is to “explore and understand cyberspace; to study its development, dynamics, norms, and standards; and to assess the need or lack thereof for laws and sanctions.”  Basically, they study the relationship between the Internet, law, and society through a number of fascinating initiatives, many of which involve some of the celebrated intellectuals and authors in fellowship at the center.  Some of these initiatives involve tools that better enable educators to utilize, and be supported by, online and technology-based platforms.  We invited Kendra Albert, research assistant at the Berkman Center and assistant to noted Berkman steward and Harvard Law School Professor Jonathan Zittrain, to visit with us at Harvard Business Publishing and give an overview of some of the free tools and platforms they’ve developed for education.

Best Practices in Online Learning: Full Sail University

At Harvard Business Publishing we’re investigating ways to best enable our customers to use our business content in online environments.  To that end we spend a good deal of time info-sharing with eductators and program designers to hear about their best practices, challenges, and lessons learned.  We recently held an information sharing session with Full Sail University.  Full Sail is one of the premier art, music, game and web design, and film schools in the world – and its online programs have been lauded for their success in engaging and educating learners (they won a “21st Century Best Practices in Distance Learning Award” in 2011 from the United States Distance Learning Association).  Here’s a review of how they achieve such great results with their online program.