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Randy Pausch's Boldest Innovation
A central concern with MOOCs and other student directed learning experiences is that by decentering the traditional gatekeeping role of teachers, such experiences lack an authoritative center for determining the rigor and depth of a course as well judging the mastery of learning outcomes by students. In a traditional one-to-many style of pedagogy, teachers simultaneously perform the roles of content creator, disseminator, and arbitrator of student success. The basis for academic rigor is based on structures such as the credit hour – students meet for three hours a week, complete three hours of homework between meetings, and repeat this cycle for 15 weeks.
Latest Posts
MOOCs and Intellectual Property: Ownership and Use Rights
Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have become the buzzword these days. Besides the interest and the hype associated with MOOCs, campuses are having serious discussions about the opportunities and challenges that these online courses pose. The EDUCAUSE Executive Briefing, What Campus Leaders Need to Know About MOOCs, highlights a number of key issues for colleges and universities to understand about MOOCs,...
Pathway to Possibility: A Framework is Renovated and Refined
Last September, Next Generation Learning Challenges published a white paper laying out our perspective on what next generation learning is and what it requires. The six dimensions of the framework were built out of observations of the work of NGLC grantees and a scan of the field. Since then, we have been collecting comments, feedback, and suggestions for making the framework “work” for a broad audience, so that it may serve as a guidepost for...
Three Vexing Problems and their Common Origin
Walk around any institution of higher education, even those well known for effective delivery and use of information technology, and you will find the following to some degree or another.
- Information Technology staff suffering from work pressures that never abate. With expectations far outstripping available resources, day-to-day work consists of putting out fires and moving on to the next.
- Critical stakeholders continually disappointed with the pace and...
Collaboration Enables Next-Generation Digital Learning
By Rob Abel, Marwin Britto, Patrick Masson, and John Johnston
The growing emergence of digital devices, learning platforms, and applications promises easier access to a variety of content, increased productivity, and the realization of personalized...
Winds of Change: Higher Productivity in Higher Education
Editor’s Note: In this post, Brandt Redd suggests that personalized learning approaches can address dual pressures on higher education: increasing societal needs and expectations and flat or declining funding. Brandt is Senior Technology Officer for Education Programs at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He writes regularly at ofthat.com. This post originally appeared on the NGLC...














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