Coursera – Music for Deckchairs

Sightings

Kate Bowles July 11, 2014 15 Comments

Updates below In a bizarre coincidence, when I opened the book to scan the contents I found myself looking at the section about sharks. In particular, “surviving if you are in a raft and you sight sharks—”… I wonder if anyone would be interested in using this as a model for an edtech field manual for surviving the Higher Ed apocalypse. Jim Groom,”Survival: the manual” July 7 2014 Thanks to Jim Groom, I’ve been thinking about Jaws in this plainly bizarre week in the short history…

Edtech and online learning, Risk

Pieces of the sky

Kate Bowles October 20, 2013 13 Comments

None of this is inevitable — not MOOCs, not funding cuts, not the death of the giant brick-and-mortar research university or the death of the small liberal arts college, no matter how gleefully the libertarians in Silicon Valley rub their hands as they craft their hyperbolic narratives about the end of the university and the promise of education technology — all their stories about innovation and doom and profit. Audrey Watters, minding the future, 15 Oct 2013 “Normality’s threatened by the…

Edtech and online learning

Business as usual

Kate Bowles June 2, 2013 3 Comments

In an evolving market, the development of sustainable business models is always a challenge but I believe that if we build something great, a whole range of business opportunities could come our way. Simon Nelson, CEO, FutureLearn, Feb 2013 Over the past year, MOOCs have opened the doors of access to quality education, and have captured the attention of educational leaders and students worldwide. Today, we’re excited to announce the next step in our mission to foster student learning without…

Being an academic, Casualisation of work, Edtech and online learning, Rankings

It’s not you, it’s me

Kate Bowles September 25, 2012 26 Comments

So, I signed up for a Coursera MOOC, and almost immediately the experience turned into Lucy and the Chocolate Factory. It’s a scene that suckers itself onto almost any stressful situation. Lucy and Ethel take a job putting chocolates into wrappers. It’s a conveyor belt scenario, and the task itself is simple; the challenge is to keep pace. Lucy’s enjoying herself, messing about. But one stumble leads to a recovery problem, and before they know it Lucy is eating chocolates…

Change management, Edtech and online learning, Higher education

The revolution might be televised

Kate Bowles July 22, 2012 8 Comments

The first time I watched the awful EPIC2020 videos I was so irked by everything about them that I never went back to look carefully at the details of their campaign to reform higher education. But now I have, and I’m beyond irked. I’ve been boosted into the realm of appalled fascination. They’re going to “shatter the paradigm that the future will be anything like the past as well as facilitate discussion and accelerate actions to bring about the transformation of the…

Change management, Edtech and online learning, Higher education