Serendipity35

Here is a sample of articles from today's newsletter.

Reconsidering MOOC Mania - By Jay Schalin - Phi Beta Cons - National Review ... - National Review Online (blog)
mooc - Google News
Reconsidering MOOC Mania - By Jay Schalin - Phi Beta Cons - National Review ...National Review Online (blog) But even if the MOOC model makes good economic sense, it makes bad education sense and misrepresents what genuine teaching is and what the "best" teachers actually do. For starters, unlike TED speakers, they don't simply deliver lectures and profess. For the Future Student, Higher Education Will Be Redefined | MindShiftKQED

Finally, alternatives to prominent MOOCs
elearnspace
Tony Hirst shared a new initiative via OU UK: UK universities embrace the free, open, online future of higher education powered by The Open University. From a Times HE release: Futurelearn will carry courses from 12 UK institutions (see list), which will be available to students across the world free of charge. 

Open University launches British Mooc platform to rival US providers - Times Higher Education
mooc - Google News
Telegraph.co.uk  Open University launches British MOOC platform to rival US providers  Times Higher Education Open University launches British Mooc platform to rival US providers. 14 December 2012. By Chris Parr. A UK-based platform for massive open online courses (MOOCs) to rival established providers in the US has been launched by The Open University.U.K. Universities Forge Open Online Courses Alliance: FutureLearn Consortium ...TechCrunchOU leads universities into online venture 

Knight Center concludes its first massive open online course with outstanding ... - Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas (blog)
mooc - Google News
Knight Center concludes its first massive open online course with outstanding ...Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas (blog)The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas' ambitious Massive Open Online Course (MOOC),
which attracted more than 2,000 students from 109 countries, concluded its first edition with resounding success on Saturday, Dec. 8. 

The Library as a Free Enterprise
Inside Higher Ed
Blog: Library Babel Fish Mita Williams, of the University of Windsor, recently posted her slides from an amazing talk that she gave last month. Anyone who follows me on Twitter might have noticed my ALL CAPS enthusiasm for what she had to say. It was a wide-ranging talk, but it projected the kind of future we can have if we pay attention to what's going on and keep hold of one important idea: the future of the academic library is free. Free as in freedom. Free as in access to ideas without gatekeepers or tolls. Free as in enabling the creation of new things...

Two companies give faculty more control of online courses
Inside Higher Ed
StraighterLine and Udemy offer the potential of self-employment to entrepreneurial professors. But will a free market for online teaching pay off for faculty?

A MOOC for British Universities
Inside Higher Ed
Twelve British universities have created Futurelearn as a platform for MOOCs (massive open online courses) to be available free to anyone in the world, Times Higher Education reported. Courses will be offered by: Cardiff University, King's College, University of London, Lancaster University, The Open University, University of Birmingham, University of Bristol, University of East Anglia, University of Exeter, University of Leeds, University of Southampton, University of St. Andrews, University of Warwick

Research questions on MOOCs: Who’s talking, who’s completing, and where’s the teaching?
Computing Education Blog
In the last three weeks, I’ve spent a day at MIT (talking to several MITx and edX researchers) and two days at Stanford (where just about everyone I met is teaching MOOCs in Coursera or Class2Go or Udacity, and I got the chance to meet with Daphne Koller, too), where I was asked several times...