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Udacity And San Jose State See Improvement In Their Online Education Experiment
Experimentation is a roller coaster. San Jose State University suspended its controversial experiment in online courses last spring after disappointing results. But the university and its platform partner, Udacity, bounced back on their second try, improving students’ outcomes in four of five summer courses, compared to their traditional online counterparts.
SJSU’s pilot with Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is supposed to usher in an era of super-low-cost courses for the masses — without sacrificing quality of instruction. In fact, the theory is that the self-paced learning style of online video lectures is more tailored to individual needs than a one-size-fits-all classroom. Students consult with tutors and their peers whenever they desire, and they can listen to lectures as many times as they need to in order to master the material.
SJSU was the first to offer college credit, which caused a torrent of online higher education experiments all over the country. So, when SJSU’s spring semester fell short of expectations, it was potentially a huge setback. Turns out, the failure was premature.
According to SJSU Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Ellen Junn, they ramped up orientation efforts for new students, improved email communications during the course, and added ways to encourage students to finish the course. “Everyone needs a little encouragement to stay on track. So we’ve added tools that help students gauge their progress and we’re checking in with individual students more often,” Junn said a statement.
One major issue plaguing the experiment is that Udacity and SJSU have opened up the course to high schoolers and part-time college students. According to the Wall Street Journal, “20% were high school students, 62% of students in the pilot were not regular San Jose students, and all of the matriculated ones had failed a remedial math class before.” In other words, students with sub-par performance dominated the class, driving down the scores.
Now, for some very strange reason, SJSU has decided to ignore the statistical methods typically used to assess curricular experiments. Contemporary education researchers usually group students by age, gender, race, socioeconomic status, IQ, and/or educational experience. Instead, SJSU just releases the average scores of all the students, even though the average MOOC student is much different from the average on-campus student. Using basic statistical procedures (or at least reporting them) would have saved everyone from a big headache.
Regardless of the outcomes (and the methods of assessment), this is all one big experiment, so we’ll have to patient with the outcome. I maintain, however, that SJSU will fundamentally change higher education as we know it.
[Image Credit: Flickr user roarofthefour]
You Can Bet On Who Will Be Microsoft's Next CEO (Marissa Mayer Pays Out 33 To 1)
A betting service has compiled a list of potential candidates for Microsoft’s soon-to-be-vacant CEO role that you can wager on. It’s a partially serious, partially silly list. Microsoft COO Kevin Turner as CEO? Perhaps. Apple CEO Tim Cook as the new Microsoft boss? Probably not.
But Turner pays out but 6 to 1 while Cook is a 100 to 1 longshot, so place your bets accordingly.
In the thinking of betting group Ladbrokes, Steven Sinofsky might make a return to Microsoft (8 to 1 odds), Stephen Elop might leave Nokia to run his former employer (5 to 1), Marissa Mayer might ditch Yahoo for Big Redmond (33 to 1), and Jack Dorsey might head up a company whose products he likely hasn’t used in years (40 to 1).
Yes, you can bet that Bill Gates will come back to Microsoft as its chief, but it pays out 50 to 1, which is a pretty decent indication that the boys at Ladbrokes aren’t utterly silly. But they have “Cheryl Sandberg” [sic] on the list at 40 to 1, so I doubt their savvy.
CNET jokingly notes that “bookie’s algorithms are more finely tuned than a first violinist’s Strad,” which makes the above fun as the bookies in this case have created a few bets that they know won’t pay out. Hell, they could offer Cook at 1,000 to 1 and it would still be decidedly negative EV bet for the average piker.
We here at TechCrunch recently played Ballmer Bingo ourselves, noting that Google’s Vic Gundotra might be in play. Ladbrokes will pay out 25 to 1 if that happens.
In reality, a short list of candidates has not been leaked yet, probably because Microsoft is early in the process of picking its next CEO. Who will it be? I know it’s not me, or you. The list of candidates–people with enough experience a knowledge and charisma to run a technology company the scale of Microsoft–is small, but not vanishing. For now, bet away, current Windows boss Terry Myerson pays out 12 to 1.
Top Image Credit: Aanjhan Ranganathan
Online Ad Company Turn Launches In Japan
Turn, which offers advertising tools in areas like real-time bidding and analytics, is announcing today that it has opened its first office in Japan.
This is part of a larger move into the Asia-Pacific region, said CEO Bill Demas — the company expanded in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia in the past year, and it also has a data center based in Hong Kong.
“We know we need to be in population centers, there are certainly users [in Japan] who are immersed in the Internet, and it has an active and thriving advertising community,” Demas said. “The inbound interest in Turn relative to other markets is just about as high as I’ve seen anywhere.”
To lead the company’s efforts in Japan, Turn has hired Akito Sato to be its country manager. Sato was previously strategic business development manager at Google Japan, where he launched the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, DoubleClick Search, and DoubleClick Bid Manager.
Sato will be in charge of building out a larger team Japanese team. He said that when it comes to real-time bidding, Japan is a big market “dominated by local and domestic players,” so having a local team will give Turn an advantage over other global companies trying to enter the country. In addition, he said Turn will be “doing an extensive among of localization,” both from a language and feature perspective, for the Japanese market.
Sato has been on the job for about six weeks, but the office itself only opened this week, Turn says.
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