Harvard University announced this month that three of its schools –Harvard Business School (HBS), the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Department of Statistics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences– will create a new certificate program, the Harvard Business Analytics Program, with 2U, the online program management company.

Aimed at executives in full-time work, the program, to be started in March 2018, will be delivered through 2U’s online platform and will feature live, seminar-style classes with Harvard faculty members. The program will cost around $50,000 for three semesters, with an estimated time requirement of 10 hours per week. A cohort of 60 or so students will began the program.

Chip Paucek, CEO of 2U, said the technology 2U can offer universities goes far beyond “just what the student sees.” The company can use analytics to predict things such as enrollment and completion of courses, in addition to making programs widely accessible, and securing content from cyberattack.

Aside from technology, 2U also offers up-front money. The company “invests heavily in each of its partnerships,” said Paucek, typically spending between $5 million and $10 million in the first few years. Each 2U partnership lasts a minimum of 10 years to give the company time to recoup its investment from a significant slice of the student enrollment fees. Paucek said the partnership with Harvard was a high point in the company’s 10-year history, and that the company was “honored to be a brand ambassador for one of the best-known brands in the world.”

Lakhani acknowledged that Harvard has many resources at its disposal, including its existing technology platforms’ edX (which it founded with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and HBX, the business school’s adapted platform. But while the university has used these platforms mostly to experiment with asynchronous massive open online courses, Harvard was interested in “another exploration in this space” and other ways to “reconceptualize the [educational] delivery model,” Lakhani said.

Looking around for ways to do that, he said, led the university to 2U. “This experiment allows us to learn to say, if in fact we have a technology provider that will take on the burdens of infrastructure, and that has experience with running this type of program, we should take advantage of their expertise,” he said.

The deal between Harvard and 2U comes as some analysts and observers question whether universities will (and should) continue to pay outside companies to take their programs online. (A highly critical report Monday questioned whether such arrangements might undermine public higher education.)

• Inside Higher Ed: Harvard Goes Outside to Go Online
• Harvard’s view
• 2U’s view

The “Freshman Year for Free” Open edX-based educational initiative, with courses mostly designed by IBL Studios, was featured in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) this Friday, August 11, as “latest path to free college credits”.

• “The venture is the brainchild of Steven Klinsky, founder and chief executive of New Mountain Capital. He is covering the cost of the creation of 40 online courses designed and taught by professors from accredited universities.” 

• “Mr. Klinsky said the would cover the exam fees for the first 10,000 students. (Both AP and CLEP test cost just under $100)”

• “Mr. Klinsky said the funded the endeavor, under the aegis of the Modern States Education Alliance, with a donation he described only as being in the “single digit millions.” He hopes that in the future other philanthropists will give money to the program to cover the cost of the exams.”

The program deserved also the attention of The Washington Post and The Chronicle of Higher Education (“New Venture Will Offer Free Courses That Students Can Take for College Credit”).

• “The venture, being formally unveiled on Wednesday, includes a catalog of online courses in more than 40 subjects that were developed by academics affiliated with major universities across the country. Leaders of the Modern States Education Alliance, the New York City philanthropy behind the project, call it an “on ramp” to college.”
  

• “The venture is “a private-sector approach to solving a social problem,” said Mr. Klinsky, who is also the founder and chief executive of New Mountain Capital, a private-equity firm that once held a major stake in Strayer Education, a for-profit-college company. Modern States recruited the professors and created the courses in collaboration with edX, the nonprofit MOOC venture, and with a production studio in New Jersey.”

• “Freshman Year for Free isn’t the only venture offering free or “free-ish” college options.Efforts like the University of the People, the Global Freshman Academy at Arizona State University, and offerings at Saylor.org were all created in a similar vein.”

• “Mr. Klinsky and David A. Vise, a former Washington Post reporter who is executive director of Modern States, said they expected the courses would be a useful alternative to online courses that cost much more. Students’ only costs associated with Modern States courses are the fees for the credit tests.”

• “The venture could also contribute to improved rates of college completion, especially for nontraditional students.”

• “Mr. Vise, of Modern States, said some high-school teachers are using the courses to supplement their AP curricula.”

• “Both Mr. Klinsky and Mr. Vise acknowledged that the courses might not be for everyone, especially given research showing that students from disadvantaged educational backgrounds often need mentoring and support to complete an online course. “We’re saying, it’s an opportunity,” said Mr. Klinsky.”

• “Freshman Year for Free wasn’t initially part of the Modern States plan. Back in 2012 Mr. Klinsky set out to create a new kind of organization that would grant accreditation to alternative education providers. But he ran into obstacles, he said, and realized, “I didn’t have the power to change the accrediting system.” So rather than try to invent a new accrediting body, he decided to create courses that could be validated through a credit system that had been around for decades.”

The Founder of Modern States Education Alliance was also featured at Bloomberg on an article titled “In the Hamptons, a Financier Talks Housemates and College Credit”.

• Press Release: “Modern States Launches “Freshman Year For Free”, Tuition-free College-level Courses For Credit in All Major Freshman Subjects”
• Open edX platform
• Main Website
• Official Launch on Facebook Live, on August 9
• Steve Klinsky‘s column on Real Clear Life: “Free College Is Now Here… Really”
• The story on edX, University Business, Military Technologies, Market Wired and Campus Technology

“MOOCs will enhance classrooms, but also, they will serve as competition in classrooms, and that’s going to force our universities, I think, to up their game,” said in an interview at EdSurge Professor Barbara Oakley, author of the “Learning How to Learn” online course at Coursera.com, which has had two million registered students.

These are some of the extracts of the interview:

• “It’s in professors’ best interest, often, to dismiss and disparage MOOCs because, well face it, they’re competition.For example, at San Jose State University, they had an experiment where low-cost MOOCs allowed people to take courses that they simply couldn’t get into because there weren’t enough seats in the classrooms, and it was really causing problems. They could do this for very low-cost, and the faculty revolted. They made it clear during their meetings that it had nothing to do with the students and the students’ needs. It was faculty fear about their jobs.”

• “Moving a university is a little bit like moving a cemetery.”

• “Most recently, there was a comparative study at MIT where students, if I remember correctly, did a little bit better in the MOOC course on the same standardized test than the people who took it in class. And they preferred the MOOC course to the in-class course.”

• “The University of Colorado is now working towards having MOOCs so that people can take them for college credit. Once they begin becoming broadly available for college credit, it’s going to start changing the scenario of higher education. Largely because it will provide for more competition and lower cost for college degrees, which I think are good things for students today.”

edX.org has merged the latest course updates, important course dates and the course outline into a one-stop Course page, which includes also bookmarks.

This change was performed on July 24, along with a new version, the 2.9.1, of the iOS and Android mobile app. This release contains an Important Dates section to help learners keep track of deadlines, as well as option to share courses on Facebook, Twitter and other networks.

In addition, the edX engineers have added a setting on the both the instructor dashboard and the Staff Debug viewer that allows course authors at edX.org to override learner scores for individual problems, in order to accommodate learners with special needs.

The most important change on the edX code –available on the master branch but not yet on the Open edX named versions– affects the possibility of creating different content for learners based not only on cohorts, but also on enrollment tracks, as long as the courses offer different enrollment options. The content will vary on the course, too.

Finally, learner grades are now included in weekly data packages. Additionally, there is a new “Passing Learners” column to the table on the Courses page in Insights Analytics.

• August 2017: Product Update. 

MOOC providers are now more certain about their real audience.

Innovative teaching at MIT has been recently recognized through its 2017 Second Annual Digital Technology Awards –intended to inspire the adoption of digital technologies and development of new applications.

In June, six faculty members received awards for their work.

• For work in Foundations of System Design and Management (ESD.411/412/413): Professors Edward Crawley, Bruce Cameron, Bryan Moser and Olivier de Weck
• For work in Fundamentals of Music (21M.051) and Medieval and Renaissance Music (21M.220): Professor Michael Scott Cuthbert
• For work in Relativity (8.033) and Relativistic Quantum Field Theory (8.323): Professor Tracy Robyn Slatyer

The video above summarizes those innovations that improved classroom teaching and learning.

City Vision University, a nationally accredited online-only Christian university, has launched a four-year bachelor’s degree in Business for $5,000.

This initiative, conducted by Dr. Andrew Sears, was developed in partnership with Saylor Academy. It fits with the university’s view of providing a radically affordable education. The school is also developing a similar Computer Science degree.

The Business degree includes the following pathway:

1. During Freshman and Sophomore year, students take 15 courses (45 credits) through Saylor Academy endorsed by Qualifi. Saylor.org courses are fully online, self-paced (independent study) and asynchronous (can start at any time).

2. During Sophomore Year, students transfer to City Vision to take 5 courses (15 credits). City Vision courses are 8-week, instructor-led courses that start 5 times a year. Students will receive an Associate of Science in Business Administration for a total two-year cost of $2,000.

3. On Junior year, students take 30 credits accredited by Qualifi. Credits are transferred to City Vision.

How long should your lecture video on edX or any Open edX platform be?

Never longer than six minutes. After this time, the attention dramatically drops, as shown in the graphic above.

Unsurprisingly, students engaged more with shorter videos.

All of it is shown by research from Philip J. Guo, now a professor of Computer Science at UC San Diego, after considering five million watching sessions.

Interestingly, pursuing a certificate doesn’t mean that the learner will dedicate more time to watching video.

Anant Agarwal, CEO at edX, talked about these big data and neuroscience discoveries during the last Open edX conference in Madrid, Spain (video below).

The edX organization has released an early version of the new Open edX platform, Ginkgo, although it is not ready for production yet. The final version, based on the edx.org code of July 6th, is expected within one month.

“The first Ginkgo test release is available: open-release/ginkgo.1rc1. Between now and the release of Ginkgo.1, there will be fixes applied, but typical development will not affect Ginkgo from this point on,” explained Ned Batchelder, a veteran edX engineer.

“There is no upgrade script from Ficus to Ginkgo, and there will not be one. We will be focusing instead on written instructions to guide people in updating their installations. Instead of upgrading, we will be supporting moving your data and configuration from a Ficus installation to a new Ginkgo installation,” added Ned Batchelder.

Ginkgo will bring new features into the Open edX platform such as a new learner dashboard with programs and progress (in the picture above), a new navigation across the courseware (as displayed at courses currently hosted at edX.org), coupons and enrollment codes as well as a mobile app with clickable video transcripts.

Marco Morales, an edX engineer in charge, elaborated on these features during the last Open edX conference, as shown in the video below. Also below, a screen shot of a Ginkgo installed by the IBL team.