Long-Awaited NSF/San Jose Evaluation of MOOCs Released Yesterday!

Dear Commons Community,

A NSF-funded San Jose State University research team has taken a close look at a high-profile experiment in which the institution offered “augmented” online courses (MOOCs) last spring in partnership with the online-learning company Udacity. The team released its long-awaited report late yesterday, and it contains few surprises.  As reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

“.. the university and Udacity stole much of the report’s thunder two weeks ago, when both made a big deal about how students’ grades in the online courses—dismal in the spring experiment—had improved when the same courses were offered again during the summer, this time to students who were largely better prepared.

The university’s experiment has attracted a fair amount of attention because it attempts to test whether the technology and approach that Udacity has taken for its massive open online courses—MOOCs—can be adapted to work in conventional online courses offered to a limited number of students by a traditional university.”

While the spring results were indeed discouraging—students in comparable face-to-face courses did much better—the researchers say that low pass rates in the online courses “should be considered in light of the fact that the project specifically targeted at-risk populations”.

Tony

 

Gail Collins: Why de Blasio Won the Democratic Primary?

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times’ Gail Collins analyzes today Bill de Blasio’s  victory in the New York Democratic Primary last Tuesday.   She comments that one big factor for his victory was:

“…a TV ad he aired that featured his son, Dante, talking about his father’s stand on the issues. Michael Barbaro of The Times, in a postelection analysis, called it “the commercial that changed the course of the mayor’s race…

…The thing viewers remember most about the de Blasio ad is not the candidate’s housing policy but the fact that his family is racially mixed: he’s white, his wife is black and Dante has the most impressive Afro since Angela Davis…”

However, the real key to the Dante ad was not that it reminded black voters that the candidate had an African-American wife. It was the way:

“… it appealed to our multiethnic yearning for racial harmony. The de Blasio family seems so happy. The pictures of them laughing together remind you both of how far we’ve come and where we’d like to go. It’s the same effect the nation got when Barack Obama talked about his background and you remembered that when Obama was born, less than 10 percent of Americans approved of interracial marriage.”

De Blasio will have to prove himself as a candidate, but as Collins concludes:

“..we’ll remember that he was the guy who made one ad that created one urban feel-good moment, just before Election Day.”

Yes!

Tony