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Picked up information on this last week during the visit by Al Gore to St. Louis County Library and thought it might be worth passing along for those who might find it of interest.
https://www.coursera.org/
Might be worth a look.
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renate
(13,776 posts)I just signed up for a course that's taught by a guy whose books I've bought in the past. TOTALLY EXCITED! Thank you!
RedCappedBandit
(5,514 posts)
Le Taz Hot
(22,271 posts)Last edited Fri Feb 15, 2013, 05:55 AM - Edit history (1)
Great list of courses! Went to the site and bookmarked. Thanks for posting this.
ETA: Just signed up for the "Know Thyself" course from the University of Virginia. I can't even tell you how hard it was to pick just one.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)not everyone is looking for credit courses. I know for one that I certainly would not be at my age and may just want to pick up information on topics to be better informed. I believe there to be room for both in this world. I find iTunes U, Podcasts, YouTube and the Pritzker Military Library to be excellent sources of enjoyable and informational lectures.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)like the initial target is community colleges.
The five courses approved for college credit recommendation include four undergraduate credit courses:
Pre-Calculus from the University of California, Irvine
Introduction to Genetics and Evolution from Duke University
Bioelectricity: A Quantitative Approach from Duke University
Calculus: Single Variable from the University of Pennsylvania
And one course approved for developmental math vocational credit recommendation:
Algebra from the University of California, Irvine
Over the next months we will work to receive ACE CREDIT recommendations for additional courses.
You can earn an ACE CREDIT college credit recommendation by signing up for an eligible course in the Signature Track and then taking an online proctored Credit Exam at the end of the course. We are working with a third-party provider, ProctorU, to enable online proctoring so that students anywhere in the world can take these special proctored assessments via a webcam at their convenience. There is an additional fee for the Credit Exam.
http://blog.coursera.org/post/42486198362/five-courses-receive-college-credit-recommendations
It has always been possible to learn things on one's own by reading, sitting in at local colleges, etc. This is not about that, even though that's the opening wedge.
Make no mistake; it's more education deform, and it's targeted at public colleges and universities.
It will end with information becoming more privatized than ever. These are loss leaders, and will be removed once the goal is achieved, just like walmart raises prices after it kills off the local competition.
With the decline of hard-copy publishing & the attack on public institutions we are headed for a perfect storm of information monopoly.
JI7
(89,275 posts)are you saying that community colleges and other public universities will stop offering these classes because students can take them for free and get credit ?
and once these classes stop being offered at public schools these free courses will stop being offered also and force students to pay for private classes ?
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)and universities will be pressured by supposed 'financial crisis' to accept the credits.
Which will mean they will further cut back on physical course offerings and staff. Which will mean futher layoffs in the education sector and the shutdown of colleges and universities in the public sector in particular.
I posted a link which you apparently didn't read.
The new industry of large-scale online education will garner an important measure of academic respectability Thursday when the American Council on Education announces that four courses of the Mountain View, Calif.-based Coursera organization are worthy of college credit — if anti-cheating measures are enforced.
It is now up to colleges and universities to decide whether to allow their students to replace traditional courses taught in classrooms with low-cost online courses that enroll many thousands of students worldwide and involve little direct interaction with instructors. (but of course it isn't 'up to' colleges and universities, it's up to their funders and their complicit administrators)
Dean Florez, a former California state senator who is president of the Twenty Million Minds Foundation, an organization that seeks to widen access to online learning, described the move as a huge step in national higher education. He said he hoped that it will encourage state colleges and universities in California and elsewhere to move more quickly into online education, especially for entry-level courses that are now so overcrowded that students have trouble enrolling in them, delaying graduation. (of course, they're overcrowded because funding has already been cut for actual teaching, but when has truth-telling ever been a neoliberal priority?)
It is usually free to take a course through Coursera and other similar groups, including Udacity and edX. However, Coursera charges students $30 to $99 for a completion certificate for a class taken under surveillance monitoring that includes individualistic typing patterns to prove a student's identity. For an additional $60 to $90, a student will be eligible for the ACE credit by taking final exams proctored through webcams. A portion of those fees will go to schools such as UC Irvine that created the classes.
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/feb/07/local/la-me-0207-online-credit-20130207
another step toward the universal surveillance state, with big brother in your living room as well...
oh brave new world that has such neoliberal wonders in it
Live and Learn
(12,769 posts)It enhances us all.
SwissTony
(2,560 posts)the chance to get some quality education. And it's free.
'Normal" students will still attend these institutions and earn their degrees.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)to get it.
those who aren't shilling, that is.
JI7
(89,275 posts)HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)ultimately.
as well as another step into the universal surveillance state.
The new industry of large-scale online education will garner an important measure of academic respectability Thursday when the American Council on Education announces that four courses of the Mountain View, Calif.-based Coursera organization are worthy of college credit — if anti-cheating measures are enforced.
It is now up to colleges and universities to decide whether to allow their students to replace traditional courses taught in classrooms with low-cost online courses that enroll many thousands of students worldwide and involve little direct interaction with instructors.
Dean Florez, a former California state senator who is president of the Twenty Million Minds Foundation, an organization that seeks to widen access to online learning, described the move as a huge step in national higher education. He said he hoped that it will encourage state colleges and universities in California and elsewhere to move more quickly into online education, especially for entry-level courses that are now so overcrowded that students have trouble enrolling in them, delaying graduation.
It is usually free to take a course through Coursera and other similar groups, including Udacity and edX. However, Coursera charges students $30 to $99 for a completion certificate for a class taken under surveillance monitoring that includes individualistic typing patterns to prove a student's identity. For an additional $60 to $90, a student will be eligible for the ACE credit by taking final exams proctored through webcams. A portion of those fees will go to schools such as UC Irvine that created the classes.
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/feb/07/local/la-me-0207-online-credit-20130207
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,045 posts)Learning is a life-long process.
You can't teach an old dog new tricks, so keep learning new tricks and you'll never be an old dog.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)to do so.
Your post is an exemplar of condescending and diversionary nonsense rolled into one.
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,045 posts)HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)demonstrates perspicaciousness, not anger.
I understand why you are driven to attack me on a personal basis quite well.
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,045 posts)HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)you have repeatedly made personal remarks about me, choosing to analyse me rather than the topic at hand. that's a fact.
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,045 posts)When I wrote "you", {on edit - in my first post in this thread} I was writing generally, in the plural, really meaning us the body politic, we the people. Your post that I was responding to spoke of generic groups like "capitalists" and even included the word or phrase "the public", but you forgot that.
At other times, when I have thought there might be some confusion, I have written something like "one can" or "a person can", but then people complain that the language is stiff and awkward.
So I can't win. Whether I write "you" or "one" or "a person", someone will object.
In this case, you chose to interpret the "you" as being personal. It was not. If you want an apology, you can have it. I apologize for not writing more clearly in a way that you couldn't misinterpret.
Most people, even if they had thought I was advising them personally, would accept the advice, especially if they have been actively learning all their lives. Even if they thought it necessary to explain that, they would not derail their own thread to start a fight over a non-existent but perceived slight.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)become dependent on hand-outs?
I do not believe that these free courses will detract at all from the income of universities. And they give a great opportunity to those that never would have a chance to go to a university or are retired and just want the knowledge.
A bird in the hand is worth 10 in the "long game".
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)such a great analogy.
online education deform classes aren't the only means of self-education that currently exists.
but they are going to kill lots of the presently existing means.
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)with you that students interested in a degree program will certainly attend these institutions and go through the process required to complete their degree programs however, there appears to be other points of view. I don't see this as a slippery slope to privatize education (which will certainly be changing over the next few years and decades as technology does) rather I see it as a democratization of education and information. I don't think that even these organizations who supposedly will attempt to capitalize on the alleged demise of the state or local schools will be able to keep the genie of information in the bottle.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)democratization of information has nothing to do with it, though that's how it's being sold. but the end game will be quite different.
TalkingDog
(9,001 posts)Show me.
Show me prior examples of higher educational systems being privatized after the courses are offered cheap to free by a 3rd party. (say... for example, your average public library)
Otherwise, you are simply stomping around in the creek with a big branch trying to assert your dominance in the hierarchy.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)i write for those with eyes to see, not the willfully blind.
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)JI7
(89,275 posts)HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)people learn all the time without going to university. but these *are* university classes.
being offered not, contrary to the PR, as learning experiences, but as part of the ongoing attack on public services, unions, and public education.
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/feb/07/local/la-me-0207-online-credit-20130207
JI7
(89,275 posts)i just don't see what difference it makes.
the people who are excited because it's free and just like to learn for their enjoyment will no longer take them if they have to pay later.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)not what it is. it's the beginning of another online education platform that will eventually be charged for.
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/feb/07/local/la-me-0207-online-credit-20130207
The targets are 'excess' public colleges and universities, as well as smaller private colleges, and their faculties.
EastKYLiberal
(429 posts)We might destroy the institution of the university where greedy professors require that you buy the newest edition of their textbook that they rush to churn out for each new round of suckers.
THAT'S NOT FAIR!!!
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)are pushing this online education crap. like pearson, for example.
professors don't set the prices for textbooks. and they get only a fraction of the price.
you really need to educate yourself, as you don't seem to understand how the world actually works.
a la izquierda
(11,797 posts)I'm 100% with you in this, but it's a losing game on DU. For whatever reason, people not associated with education don't quite get how it works. They also don't get(some, anyway) the correlation between these things and a long, slow attack on education.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)These are scary and exciting times to be an activist. Scary because the privatizing dehumanizing forces of neo-liberalism are wrecking havoc everywhere; from the climate, to endless wars, to health care, to outrageous income inequality, and, as readers of this blog know, to dismantling public education. The magnitude of this assault, its machine-like ability to crush all that lay in its way, and the fear and silence it provokes often leave me stunned and uncertain of where and how to act. But these are also exciting times, from Occupy Wall Street, to Wisconsin where workers joined in solidarity to demand their voices be heard and their rights protected; to Chicago where teachers were joined by students and parents in resisting the attack on their union and their schools; to teachers in Seattle, led by the teachers of Garfield High School, asserting their knowledge, their judgment, their dignity, and their moral righteousness to say no to MAP tests; to parents in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia joining to resist school closings: we can be a part of the movement to reclaim education and the possibility of the democratic project.
Still, we waiver between fear and courage. Many of us have found ourselves alone with our understanding that a terrible wrong is being done to public schools and universities. This loneliness deepened for me as I allowed myself to participate in the testing, accountability measures, and data collection processes that are the tools of our undoing. Even while I spoke in my courses about the dangers of these measures, even as I invited students to be critical of the accountability regime, even as I could wax eloquent over dinner about the undoing of public education by an ideology that makes a commodity of every person and idea, I went to work each day and dutifully completed the rubrics, aligned the standards, explained the best way to interface with the web-based data management system. Shame creeps in even as I write these words, as I reveal my compliance within this system. I recognize that same shame in the eyes of colleagues who remain silent when conversations turn to the madness that grips us, when ideas surface that perhaps we should take action and say no to the undoing of our commitments and responsibilities to teaching and learning for justice and liberation. I struggled mightily with my complicity, trying to carve out the spaces of resistance within my courses, within my conversations. But more and more I doubted the story I was telling myself. If, in the end, the actions that I took allowed the machine of technocracy to continue unabated, I was as responsible as the most complicit administrators and colleagues.
Like so many educators, I wrestled with and continue to try to make sense of the nature of activism within systems and institutions so dominated by fear. I once had a colleague say that I ‘frighten her’ because I was so vocal about my torment, about my sense that we could no longer agree over coffee that things were wrong, but then sit quietly in meetings and allow the destructive farce of accountability to continue. At first her fear of me confused me. Isn’t it the people in charge who frighten us, the ones who use surveillance, endless talk of budget cuts, and shock doctrine pressures to get us to conform? At some point her words became a clearer warning: speaking out is dangerous-whether or not it is followed immediately by action. There is a reason we protect free speech in our constitution, because the ability to name our world is the first act of rebellion. Just like Freire tells us.
In Liberty Plaza during Occupy Wall Street I saw a yellow poster board sign with the words scrawled by hand: ‘see something, say something.’ This simple flip of the fear mongering reminders we’d been inundated with since 9-11 helped me understand the power of bearing witness, of naming what was happening to us and refusing the narrative being imposed on us. Where was the danger? Who was trying to hurt us? And why were the people in charge so committed to silence?
I came to understand that every time I refused the words ‘accountability’ or ‘standards’ or ‘outcomes’ or the phrase ‘data driven,’ I was actively resisting the dominance of their language to describe my work. Each time I said, ‘Well why are we acting as if these numbers on this rubric reflect the development of our student teachers when we know they don’t?’ I was bearing witness to the absurdity of the measures, the data, the scientistic collection of numbers. I came to realize that it was my civic and moral duty that each time I saw the emotional violence of high stakes measurements, each time I saw the dehumanizing language of accountability, each I saw the marginalization of the voices of educators, parents and students in claiming the education we want, it was my job to say something. To raise concern. To heighten awareness. To alert others to the threat. And this naming of the reality of what was happening, this refusal to be silent in the face of what was being done to us as faculty, as educators, as human beings with a desire to make the meanings we wanted was, as my colleague wrote, frightening –to those in charge, and to those who preferred not to rouse the anger of those in charge.
Jesse Hagopian, one of the teachers involved in the Garfield boycott that has spread throughout Seattle and incited support across the country, says of the process by which the teachers came to decide to boycott “It started with a conversation in the teachers’ lounge.” It started with people seeing a test that was not working, that was hurting their students, that was twisting ideas of knowledge and learning; that simply did not work– and saying so—saying what they saw. And what they discovered was how many of them were seeing the same thing. So, when teachers, students, parents, community members ask, ‘what can I do?’ I say the first step is simple—scary yes—but simple—see something, say something.
http://atthechalkface.com/2013/01/31/see-something-something-organize/
a la izquierda
(11,797 posts)And thanks for this post. It's just so frustrating sometimes to see teachers of any stripe maligned by those who should support our cause. I'm not against the democratization of education, as I think all people should have access to study what they want. But unfortunately, that requires a sea-change in the way education is funded in the US...something which I don't envision occurring anytime soon.
Thanks for that link.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)When you speak out as a matter of conscience on issues that are important to you, it is impossible to predict the consequences. You do so because you can't look at yourself in the mirror if you don't. When I began speaking out in behalf of teachers under attack four years ago, it is because I couldn't stand to see the great teachers I worked with the Bronx being made the unremitting target of abuse by politicians and the press. Little did I know that this would link me to a national community of education activists fighting the same policies all over the country.
Now, four years later, I have dozens of new friends in almost every state in the union who have, for me at least, recreated the "Beloved Community" that the southern Civil Rights Movement held up as a movement ideal in the early 60's. The courage these individuals display in fighting top down initiatives that destroy teaching and learning, sometimes with little support in their own communities, inspires me with feelings of solidarity and love and gives me the energy to fighting on.
To all of you, whether in Florida, South Carolina, Washington, Oregon, North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Upstate New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Indiana, California, or the great city of Chicago, I owe a debt of gratitude for infusing my life with a new and higher sense of purpose. Please keep speaking truth to power and defend the right of all children to have an education that stirs their imaginations and builds on their strengths.
http://withabrooklynaccent.blogspot.com/2012/12/to-beloved-community-of-education.html
a la izquierda
(11,797 posts)I'm a product of public education from Kindergarten through PhD. I teach in a private school now, but will be taking a tenure-track position at a public university. What I think is that Americans need to be more vested in public education, meaning willing to pay taxes for quality educational services. I come from a very conservative family, on my side and my husband's. It's astonishing how many have the attitude "as soon as our kids are done with school, we're moving" so they don't have to pay the higher taxes in their town...taxes which go to their kids' schools.
The loudest voices of protest in favor of public schools and teachers came from my professors, who would go to the capital and march on behalf of their brethren in elementary and high schools.
I think that if Americans want to keep up in a very intelligent world, they must be willing to fund public education on all levels. I had to mortgage my brain to afford college, to the tune of $100,000 in federal loans (now the property of Sallie Mae, which in and of itself is criminal).
Americans value education...but millions don't want to pony up for it.
I think we're on the same page.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)propaganda from the right about how wasteful, ineffective, and downright evil public education was and 2) 40 years of neoliberal economic policy, which has left people poorer and more insecure than they were in the 'golden age' of american capitalism circa 1940-1975.
a la izquierda
(11,797 posts)It would be wild if we could change that trajectory.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)has put people in a more receptive mood.
truth will out; you can't hide the conditions of people's actually lived lives with propaganda.
so long as its just happening to some poor person over there, people can kid themselves; but imo, the oligarchs are overreaching.
Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)and I did order a lot of books but none were textbooks. I got them on amazon at a fairly inexpensive price.
a la izquierda
(11,797 posts)Greedy college professors? You've no idea what the hell you're talking about.
Most profs don't force students to buy their textbooks...because most profs don't WRITE textbooks. Most profs won't ever be rich...we do what we do because we like teaching/researching.
Many PhDs are actually on food stamps. Here, try this on for size: http://chronicle.com/article/From-Graduate-School-to/131795/
States like Texas have oversight boards telling profs what they should/shouldn't teach. None of Perry's cronies are actual educators. So yes, there is a concerted effort to destroy public education.
But you go on. You tell me about my profession
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,045 posts)lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)Education is valuable for it's own sake, I'm unsympathetic to those who profit from dispensing it.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)
Recursion
(56,582 posts)But that's a very good thing.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)private.
and they will be much less accessible to the peons. kind of like how it was during the medieval period.
Bolo Boffin
(23,796 posts)I'm signed up for the Intro to Sustainability course and two others, Irrational Behavior and Ancient Greek History. It's a great way to learn stuff for free with no need to pursue a degree or credit.
JI7
(89,275 posts)Bolo Boffin
(23,796 posts)And it looks like all the history courses, plus other stuff, are under the Humanities category:
https://www.coursera.org/#category/humanities
Jim__
(14,083 posts)
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)oh well. C'est la vie....
Ghost in the Machine
(14,912 posts)Peace,
Ghost
Recursion
(56,582 posts)That's what the State Department uses.
ZRT2209
(1,357 posts)Ghost in the Machine
(14,912 posts)Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, University of California, Irvine... University of Michigan, and many more...
http://www.ocwconsortium.org/en/aboutus
Peace,
Ghost
Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)Highly recommend it!
JI7
(89,275 posts)
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Recursion
(56,582 posts)Harvard is moving there too.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)There are several I'd like to take... now just need to create the time to do it.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)
sfpcjock
(1,936 posts)
user_name
(60 posts)My son is taking "Genetics and Evolution" right now, "How Things Work" in March, and "Planet Earth" and "Intro to Interactive Programming on Python" in the fall.
We've been really pleased with the quality of the lectures. We could opt to pay $100 for him to have a proctored exam so that he can be recommended for college transfer credit with the genetics class...
