News about UC’s Online Education Efforts

This pages offers links to news and blogs about how online courses are being developed at UC.

Feb. 20, 2013, Chronicle of Higher Education: “Professor Leaves a MOOC in Mid-Course in Dispute Over Teaching.”
A UC Irvine Economics professor resigned from his Coursera course because he refused to lower his standards to accommodate students who were only dabbling in his course. Since his lectures were prerecorded, the free online course, in which 37,000 students are enrolled, will continue without him.

Feb. 19, 2013, Changing Universities blog: “State Senate Hearing on Higher Ed: Online Program, Budget Goals, and Accountability .”
While Patrick Lenz did not think the move to online courses would save money in the near future, Nick Schweizer from the Department of Finance stated that online education could play a major role in reducing costs and increasing efficiencies. One possibility would be to use a virtual community college to allow students to take all of their courses online before they transfer to a UC. A related strategy would be to make it easier for students to get credit for outside online courses by using the exam-for-credit program.

Jan. 17, 2013, UC Newsroom: “Online education seen as key part of curriculum.”
One of the proposed solutions to the ongoing shift from public to private funding of the the University of California is to “leverage” new technologies to make “education” (or: the dissemination of information?) more efficient (cost efficient?).

hm 2/20/13