Category: Top News

Udacity.com has partnered with Chinese ride-sharing company Didi Chuxing –Uber’s China rival that has secured a one billion dollar investment from Apple– for a Machine Learning Competition. As a result of it, Didi Chuxing will award a $100k prize and an interview for a role with the company to the winner who improves its supply-demand forecasting algorithm and capability to predict. The second and third place teams in the competition will be awarded prices of RMB 50K and RMB 20K, respectively.

 Sebastian Thrun, founder of Udacity and an expert of Machine Learning, will be one of the judges.

The Machine Learning Engineering Nanodegree is one of the most successful programs at Udacity –a MOOC platform that competes to Coursera and edX.org. It is also a signature program that teaches how to become a machine learning engineer and apply predictive models to massive datasets in field like finance, healthcare and education.

• Wanted: Tech Genius! $100K Reward
• Didi and Udacity Team Up for $100K Grand Prize Machine Learning Competition!

Are traditional institutions willing to put their brands on the line to collaborate with start-ups and launch new educational pathways?

On the first anniversary of the Global Freshman Academy, three panelists and one moderator recently explored at the 2016 ASU GSV Summit the evolution of collaborations and ecosystems in open education.

Panelists:
Stephen Laster, Chief Digital Officer, McGraw-Hill Education
Anant Agarwal, CEO of edX; Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT
Adrian Sannier, Chief Academic Technology Officer, Arizona State University

Arizona State University (ASU) and Global Freshman Academy are launching four new, credit-eligible courses this June. These courses will allow students to earn up to 15 credit hours –at a cost of $600 per earned credit– that will be applied toward an ASU degree or transferred to another institution that accepts this credit.

• Introduction to Health and Wellness. This 8-week, 3 credit-hours online course starts on June 6, 2016.

• Introduction to Solar Systems Astronomy. This 8-week, 4 credit-hours online course starts on June 6, 2016.

• Western Civilization: Ancient and Medieval Europe.   This 8-week, 4 credit-hours online course starts on June 6, 2016.

• College Algebra and Problem Solving.  This 3 credit-hours course is self-paced.

By Michael Amigot / IBL 

Want more effective student-to-student engagement? Facebook happens to be a better space for MOOC learners to engage than courses’ forums.

Researchers at Pennsylvania State University and Pacific Northwest analyzed data on student discussions on three MOOCs from Coursera and found that learners favor using Facebook groups over MOOC forums.

Surprised?

Students –who use their real names on Facebook and see each other’s profiles– say that they have more positive interactions and feel a stronger sense of community there.

In other words, when it comes to student engagement, Facebook’s groups are a more attractive place to stay, foster collaboration and make students feel closer to their instructors. In addition, Facebook posts are organized better. On MOOC forums, or at least on Coursera’s forums, “students feel they don’t get attention, don’t get replies”, said a lead researcher on EdSurge.

“On the Coursera discussion forum, anyone can start a thread… The information overload is very severe, it is unorganized, and you can’t guarantee the quality.”

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The Role of Social Media in MOOCs: How to Use Social Media to Enhance Student Retention (PDF Document)

By Michael Amigot / IBL 

The CRIME101x online course, developed by the University of Queensland (UQx) on edX.org, has attracted almost 40,000 students from around the world and is now winning an international award, UQ News reported.

This MOOC, which teaches the psychology of criminal justice, uses an innovative mix of drama and interactive learning to identify some of the myths of the system as well as ways to improve.

CRIME101x has been selected for a MERLOT Classic award at the Innovate Conference in New Orleans. MERLOT’s Editorial Board described the course as “creative and contemporary”. “It offers a thoroughly modern and engaging way for students to learn about the psychology of criminal justice,” said.

“The new micro-credentials are just-in-time learning in the right field. We think that is the future,” said Anant Agarwal, CEO at edX on an interview in Business Standard.

Mr. Agarwal explained that universities that don’t innovate may disappear over a period of time. He highlighted that companies are changing the way they view the credentials their employees hold.

• “We have launched on edX a micro master’s. Why should you get a full master’s? You can get micro credentials. Say you are doing a BA (Bachelor of Arts) in Math. But you want to work as a computer programmer. You can take a micro master’s in programming from edX. By the time you have your BA in math, you can have your Masters too and get a job in programming if you like.”

• “As we talk to employers we find they are very excited about micro masters. Let’s say they hire a student after a bachelor’s degree and in India studies have shown that 95% of the bachelor graduates are unemployable. Imagine now they can all do micro masters and learn the skills to make them employable. And at a fraction of the time and cost. You are already working in a company. It’s not easy to go back and get a master’s. We think micro masters will solve this problem.”

• “The courses are free. You pay for the certificate or the credential. You have to pay US $ 50-100 depending on the course. And companies are increasingly beginning to recognize these micro credentials and will place a value on them.”

• “Why should a person go to college for four years? Why at the age of 18? Why a master’s following a undergraduate degree? I see the world becoming more unbundled, more micro – in everything. Learning is life long.”

• “Today universities only give degrees. I think in the future they will give degrees and they will give micro credentials. Universities that refuse to innovate may suffer or die out. But the rest will thrive.”

• “In 2011, my colleagues and I felt that technology had reached a point where one could teach people online in a way that has never been done before. People had done some online courses before but we felt we could use video gaming technology and apply it to learning. And create labs in various subjects – just like you play video games. One could create very engaging courses online.”
  

The University of Michigan (U-M) has announced three certificate programs, comprising 15 courses, on user experience research and human-computer interaction, user experience design and corporate financial analysis.

These courses on edX.org (priced between $49 and $99 per unit) are launched under the XSeries group, and they come in addition to the existing four free MOOCs on edX (priced at $49 if you take a verified certificate).

It is remarkable that U-M, through its Office of Digital Education & Innovation, plans to release 100 MOOCs by December and 100 more in 2017, according to Campus Technology.

Michigan also uses Coursera to host its MOOCs. However, the school has noted that a major appeal of the edX platform is its open source nature.

Two-thirds of MIT’s undergraduates have now taken a course that uses Open edX, according to Sanjay Sarma, Vice President for Open Learning at MIT.

Mr. Sarma is aiming to change the culture of teaching there by pushing the lecture model into the margins and using technology to rethink the professor’s role.

• In some courses, professors use a “flipped classroom” approach, where students watch lecture videos and do online quizzes for homework so that classroom time can focus on discussion. In others, problem sets are delivered using the edX software, which can instantly grade complicated assignments such as coding exercises or drafts of circuit diagrams. That frees up time for professors and provides detailed data on student performance.

Mr. Sarma has even pushed for breaking up semester-long courses into shorter modules, so that students can take only the parts they need, essentially remixing the curriculum into a personalized-learning playlist.

“The founding principles of MIT were disruptive. From the beginning, MIT focused more on student research and “learning by doing” than other institutions did. MIT pioneered the online publishing of teaching materials when it started its OpenCourseWare project, more than 10 years ago.”

By Michael Amigot / IBL 

The $6,600 Online Master of Science Computer Science degree –OMS CS, for short– of George Institute of Technology, announced in May 2013, continues to be a seductive proposition for undergraduates.

Overall enrollments will reach about 10,000 students. 3,358 students registered during this spring, and the expectation is to attract 1,500 over the summer and about 4,000 in the fall.

With a 55 percent acceptance rate and no GRE entrance exam, “the program has elicited wonder, enthusiasm, and trepidation”, writes William Fenton for PC Magazine as a contributing editor. Many students praise the program.

The OMS CS, offered at Udacity, costs a third of the traditional MS CS degree, priced at $21,000 for Georgia residents and twice as much for out-to-state students.

• Students can even qualify for financial aid.
• It contains 30 credit hours, or 10 three-credit courses.
• To enroll, students only need to maintain a 3.0 GPA or higher in Computer Science at an accredited undergraduate institution and pass a TOELF exam if they’re international.

“The Georgia Tech online master’s program is more in line with ventures such as General Assembly, which enable professionals to advance skills and training,” writes William Fenton.

“While the OMS CS degree may not democratize higher education, it doesn’t cannibalize it. As Georgia Tech’s leadership put it candidly, the OMS CS won’t make that much money, even when it fully scales. Meanwhile, the traditional master’s program is a veritable golden goose. In addition, all the buzz around Georgia Tech’s OMS CS degree is driving interest in the university in general, and in its computer science programs in particular. Traditional undergraduate BS CS applications increased by 85 percent in 2014 and another 35 percent in 2015; MS CS apps jumped 30 percent in 2014 and 18 percent in 2015.”

• PC Magazine: Don’t Dismiss Georgia Tech’s $6,600 Online Master’s Degree

The University of Colorado has reported that the certificates on their MOOCs offered through Coursera.com have generated roughly $110,000 since September 2015. “Conservatively, we estimate to generate $250,000 a year from courses offered on Coursera,” said Deborah Keyek-Franssen, Associate Vice President for Digital Education for the CU system.

“That’s been somewhat a welcome surprise, as CU did not necessarily expect to make money when it began offering the courses three years ago,” she explained at the Denver Post.

• “The courses help disseminate research funded by tax dollars and have the potential to introduce millions of people to CU”.
• “The courses are helping professors teach students differently and, in the case of one faculty member on the Colorado Springs campus, crowdsource research functions”.

The CU system (coursera.org/boulder and coursera.org/cusystem) has produced more than a dozen high-quality, video-based courses for Coursera and is offering several specializations, or multi-course units on one topic. These specializations end with a capstone project –at a price around of $300– that can allow to earn some transfer credit towards Master’s degrees. Coursera keeps half of that revenue.