Question
How do Texas university versus California university accounting programs differ due to a dictatorial stance of a Texas Board of accountancy stance?

Answer
The Texas Board (read that Big Brother) declared that online accounting that Texas universities are severely restricted as to what accounting education courses may be offered online as well as onsite. Texas Universities can offer online accounting courses but chances are that the Texas Board will not allow them when accounting graduates apply to take the CPA examination.

This is just one of a number of ways that the Texas Big Brother takes away accounting pedagogy discretion of all public and private universities in Texas.

Another way Big Brother reared its ugly head was its declaration that, if a Texas university course catalog or online accounting Website listed Robert E. Jensen, PhD, CPA in the course catalog or on the university Website, the university must change it to Robert Jensen, PhD if Professor Jensen is licensed in one of the other 49 states instead of Texas. After teaching for 20 years at Trinity University of Texas, Big Brother sent Bob Jensen a letter late in his career saying that since his resume is posted online he must remove the following item from his publically-available resume ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/u-of-california-readies-its-for-credit-online-course-venture/28027?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Holder of C.P.A. Certificate 1128, Chapter 32, August 1961 (Colorado)  No longer a practicing CPA

Big Brother said that the wording "No longer a practicing CPA" would not qualify for any such professor of accounting in Texas who did not hold an active Texas license to practice.

Bob Jensen, however, did not roll over so easily for Big Brother. Bob Jensen often had lunch with a judge in the state of Texas. One phone call from the judge to Big Brother resulted in a prized letter sent by Big Brother to Bob Jensen. The letter stated that Big Brother conceded that it did not have the jurisdiction to demand that Bob Jensen surrender is Colorado CPA certificate or demand that he remove reference to it in his resume. To my knowledge, however, professors who hold Texas CPA certificates and are not keeping their licenses up to date with fees and CPE credits must surrender their Texas CPA certificates to Big Brother.

But Big Brother is Still Interfering in Pedagogy Choices for Accounting Programs in Texas universities (public or private)
Thanks to the Texas Board Big Brother, accounting programs in Texas will never be able to do what California universities can do if faculty chooses to do so.
"U. of California Readies Its For-Credit Online-Course Venture," by Travis Kaya, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 4, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/u-of-california-readies-its-for-credit-online-course-venture/28027?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en 

The University of California has begun to ask faculty to design and teach online courses for a pilot program that could pave the way for widespread Web offerings at the state’s most-selective public institutions.

But that doesn’t mean the UC system is ready to adopt a much-anticipated and already-controversial online degree program just yet.

The UC Online Instruction Pilot Project, run out of the university’s Office of the President, announced on Wednesday that it is looking for 25 faculty volunteers across the system’s 10 campuses to develop and teach online courses in the 2011-12 academic year. Participants will be chosen by a faculty-appointed review committee in January, and will work with Web developers and other university faculty members over the course of the pilot project. “We’re really looking for a coalition of the willing,” said Daniel Greenstein, vice provost for academic planning. “We’re asking people to work in a common environment.”

Although the university now offers noncredit online instruction, the 25 pilot courses will offer UC credit and require the approval of the Academic Senate. The courses will be evaluated by faculty members as they are being developed and taught to determine how online instruction can be incorporated into the university’s course offerings. The faculty members will be looking especially at the quality and cost of online instruction as well as faculty workload. According to Mr. Greenstein, the central question is, “Can you actually deliver education affordably online?”

The university’s announcement comes a little more than a week after the California Legislative Analyst’s Office, which advises the State Legislature, came out in support of online classes within the UC system as a way to improve access and reduce costs in the face of an expected increase in enrollment.

According to Mr. Greenstein, building up the university’s Web offerings may be one way of dealing with a growing student body at UC campuses—but it won’t be an end-all solution.

“This problem of scale is not a new problem, and we’ve been innovating to deal with it for the past two generations,” he said. Online education is just “one of the many solutions that we’re going to need to explore.”

Mr. Greenstein sees Web education as a supplement to existing programs that will allow the university to stretch its resources. The pilot program will, for instance, focus on lower-level “gateway courses”—prerequisites taken en masse by incoming students—to free up space and faculty time for higher-level courses.

“We’ll be judged on the extent that we’ll be able to cater to the top 10 or 12 percent of California high-school graduates,” both online and in the classroom, Mr. Greenstein said, not just on the number of Web courses.

Since the pilot program was announced over the summer, Mr. Greenstein said he has heard from faculty members on all sides of the issue, including many who are skeptical that online education could ever compare to classroom learning. But that skepticism is what’s driving the pilot project.

“Let’s put some more data under what could be an ideological discussion,” he said. “It’s a challenging discussion, but it ought to be a very interesting one.”

Jensen Comment
Yeah I know that any Texas university is allowed by Big Brother to offer up to three courses online, but Big Brother dictates to all Texas universities that the accounting faculty cannot create entire online undergraduate and graduate Texas accounting programs banned by Big Brother. Graduates of those horrid online accounting degree programs at the University of Wisconsin and Maryland and anywhere else that are hired by a CPA firm in Texas will never be given permission to take the CPA examination in Texas. Big Brother has spoken.

Let's face the facts as implied by the Big Brother State Board in Texas. Even though quality distance education degree programs in accounting can be offered by universities in the other 49 states, Texas university accounting faculty are incapable of designing and implementing comparable distance accounting education programs in Texas. Big Brother has spoken! Got that?

"Teaching Online Professors ... Online," by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed, November 10, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/11/10/pearson

Will colleges and universities buy online courses designed to train the instructors who teach online courses?

Pearson, the education and media conglomerate, is betting on it. The company will announce today a plan to sell courses aimed at preparing professors to teach online.

As more traditional institutions look to scale up their online offerings, Pearson -- which already sells some pre-packaged courses, as well as textbooks and online learning platforms — sees demand for training rising. “We’re pretty bullish on the opportunity," says Don Kilburn, CEO of Pearson Learning Solutions. “There’s a real need to help.”

Pearson officials say the target audience for the new courses, scheduled to be offered beginning in January, will be institutions and systems looking to outsource training of existing faculty as they grow their Web-based programs, as well as freelancers looking to bolster their résumés as they apply for adjunct gigs. The company is also hoping to team up with one or more accredited graduate programs to offer the courses as part of a degree — or at least a certificate — in online teaching.

The move is part of Pearson’s strategy to expand beyond publishing into more segments of the e-learning industry — not unlike Blackboard, which recently announced that it will soon start packaging and selling remedial education courses to community colleges in conjunction with another e-learning company, K-12.

Like Blackboard’s remedial courses, Pearson’s courses in online teaching are still in development. The Louisiana Community and Technical College System is piloting some of the courses, but it is only two weeks in — and while Pearson has provided a good foundation, there is still tweaking to be done before the courses are shelf-ready, says Tammy Hall, director of academic services there.

Still, a preliminary menu available on Pearson’s website lists eight course titles: Introduction to Online Learning, Instructor Technology Preparation, Instructional Design for Online Learning, Promoting Student Success in the Online Learning Environment, Assessing Knowledge and Skills in the Online Learning Environment, Beyond the Online Classroom, Online Teaching Internship, and Course Design/Project Practicum.

The company plans to market the courses in the K-12 and corporate training sectors too, but it plans to do about half of its business in higher education, Kilburn says.

Many higher ed institutions with large online enrollments — including the University of Phoenix, the largest employer of online instructors — run their own training programs. But there are a few third-party providers that handle online instructor training, both for individuals and for institutions.

One is the Sloan Consortium, a nonprofit that focuses on technology and online education. Sloan runs nearly 100 workshops, averaging about a week in length and costing $400 to $500 each for individuals or $3,500 for a 100-seat institutional license. It provides online training for around 2,500 instructors per year, according to John Bourne, the organization’s executive director.

Another nonprofit, called LERN, offers a three-course sequence, plus course materials, for about $800 per head. LERN has found an accredited partner in the University of South Dakota, which offers a handful of LERN courses in online instruction for credit toward a master’s degree in educational administration. Outside of that, the organization handles online teacher training for a number of institutions, including Middle Tennessee State University, Missouri Baptist University, New Mexico State University, Norfolk State University, and several University of Texas campuses, according to Tammy Peterson, head of customer service at LERN.

Kilburn, the Pearson executive, says it is too early to estimate how his company will price its courses. But it is hoping to attract not only institutions looking to grow online that lack any scalable training mechanism for faculty, but also institutions that already do online instructor training in-house that might decide it is cheaper or more effective to outsource that task to Pearson. “I do think there will be some folks who have their own in-house programs who will look at [our offering] and evaluate it,” Kilburn says.

Continued in article

The Sad Case of Accounting Education in Texas:  How Historic Brick and Mortar Universities Fail Students Who Can Only Earn Credit Via Distance Education ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/TexasBigBrother.htm

Prestigious U.K. MBA Program Offers Courses on Facebook
"British Business School Offers M.B.A. Courses on Facebook." by Travis Kaya, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 30, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/british-university-offers-m-b-a-courses-on-facebook/28463?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Facebook has changed the way students, faculty members, and administrators communicate outside the classroom. Now, with the introduction of the London School of Business & Finance’s Global MBA Facebook app, Facebook is becoming the classroom.

The Global MBA app—introduced in October—lets users sample typical business-school courses like corporate finance and organizational behavior through the social-networking site. The free course material includes interactive message boards, a note-taking tool, and video lectures and discussions with insiders from industry giants like Accenture Management Consulting and Deloitte. This may be a good way to market a school, notes an observer from a business-school accrediting organization, but it may not be the best way to deliver courses.

Unlike most online business courses, the Global MBA program will not require students to pay an enrollment fee up front. Instead, students can access basic course material free of charge and pay the school only when they are ready to prepare for their exams. School administrators hope that letting students “test drive” the online courses before actually shelling out the tuition money will boost graduation rates.

While the school offers a large collection of study material on Facebook—including 80 hours of Web video—students seeking formal accreditation must qualify for entrance into the M.B.A. program. Once enrolled in the paid course, students are given access to additional content on the business school’s InterActive course management system, and are required to sit for examinations—like they would if they were enrolled in more traditional distance-learning or brick-and-mortar programs. The Facebook MBA program is accredited by the University of Wales and costs a total of £14,500—about $22,000.

Steve Parscale, director of accreditation for the Kansas-based Accreditation Council for Business Schools & Programs, said sample classes offered through social-networking sites could provide great advertising opportunities for online colleges. “The younger generation is all on social media,” Mr. Parscale said. “If you can get them on Facebook to test-drive a class, then you can get them to actually enroll.”

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on distance education training and education alterntives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm

Competency-Based Assessment --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/competency.htm

There are a few really noteworthy competency-based distance education programs including Western Governors University (WGU) and the Chartered Accountancy School of Business (CASB)  in Canada. But these compentency-based programs typically have assigned instructors and bear the costs of those instructors. The instructors, however, do not assign grades to students.

It appears that the Southern New Hampshire University (a private institution) is taking competency-based distance education to a new level by eliminating the instructors. It should be noted that SNHU has both an onsite campus and online degree programs.

"Online Education Is Everywhere. What’s the Next Big Thing?" by Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 31, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/online-education-is-everywhere-whats-the-next-big-thing/32898?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

. . .

The vision is that students could sign up for self-paced online programs with no conventional instructors. They could work at their own speeds through engaging online content that offers built-in assessments, allowing them to determine when they are ready to move on. They could get help through networks of peers who are working on the same courses; online discussions could be monitored by subject experts. When they’re ready, students could complete a proctored assessment, perhaps at a local high school, or perhaps online. The university’s staff could then grade the assessment and assign credit.

And the education could be far cheaper, because there would be no expensive instructor and students could rely on free, open educational resources rather than expensive textbooks. Costs to the student might include the assessment and the credits.

“The whole model hinges on excellent assessment, a rock-solid confidence that the student has mastered the student-learning outcomes,” the memo says. “If we know with certainty that they have, we should no longer care if they raced through the course or took 18 months, or if they worked on their courses with the support of a local church organization or community center or on their own. The game-changing idea here is that when we have assessment right, we should not care how a student achieves learning. We can blow up the delivery models and be free to try anything that shows itself to work.”

Continued in article

"A Russian University Gets Creative Against Corruption:  With surveillance equipment and video campaigns, rector aims to eliminate bribery at Kazan State," by Anna Nemtsova, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 17, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/A-Russian-University-Gets/63522/

Jensen Comment
In its early history, the University of Chicago had competency-based programs where grades were assigned solely on the basis of scores on final examinations. Students did not have to attend class.

Bob Jensen's threads on competency-based assessment ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/competency.htm 

Bob Jensen's threads on distance education alternatives are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm

I should point out that this is very similar to the AAA's Innovation in Accounting Education Award Winning BAM Pedagogy commenced at the University of Virginia (but there were instructors who did not teach) ---
 http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm

Screencasting

ScreenCast from TechSmith is a leading storage/server alternative for your Jing and Camtasia videos ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TechSmith

However, there are quite a few other screeencast video capturing alternatives and hosts ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_screencasting_software
This is a pretty impressive Wikipedia comparison site!

Bob Jensen's video helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

Course Management Systems/Learning Management Systems (CMS/LMS) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_management_system

From the 2011 EDUCAUSE Annual Meetings
"Educause Video Archive; Why You Hate Your CMS," by  Josh Keller, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 21, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/crosstalk-educause-video-archive-why-you-hate-your-cms/33885?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Educause Archive: Higher ed’s biggest tech conference is over, but Educause has posted a video archive of selected sessions. For those who missed them, be sure to check out Danah Boyd’s presentation on students and online privacy, a Pew presentation on trends in mobile learning, and The Chronicle’s panel on the challenges of the unbundled university.

Mobile Growth: Mary Meeker, a former Morgan Stanley analyst who is one of the most perceptive thinkers on the future of technology, made her annual presentation on how the Internet is changing on Tuesday (slides, video). The presentation emphasizes the rapid growth of mobile devices and global Internet usage.

The Hated CMS: Content-management systems, which typically help people organizations their Web sites, are typically among the least liked pieces of software. Among other faults, they age poorly, says Michael Fienen at .eduGuru. Mr. Fienen offers some advice for colleges to choose a CMS more intelligently and for CMS vendors to serve as better members of the higher-ed community.

Question
What was the first computer-based CMS/LMS system?

Hint
It went "hoot."

In the early days of CMS/LMS software there was no Internet available to the general public. The earliest commercial CMS/LMS software came in boxes of floppy disks. The earliest software was developed with funding for the U.S. military training. It later became available to the public in computer stores. Colleges, however, were long delayed in adopting this software in computing centers. Professors like me of course were experimenting on our own. In the early years I used DOS-based HyperGraphics CMS and later Windows-based Toolbook CMS.

The history of CMS/LMS systems can be investigated at the following two links:

http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245cont.htm

By being an early adopter, I was invited to hundreds of campuses to demonstrate CMS software ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Resume.htm#Presentations
Now I'm a has-been with tons of old floppy disks and old CDs!

"Popular Pearson Tutoring Programs Revamp by Offering ‘Adaptive Learning’," by Josh Fischman, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 1, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/popular-pearson-tutoring-programs-revamp-by-offering-adaptive-learning/33970?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

MyLabs and Mastering, tutoring software packages from Pearson Education that are used in hundreds of college courses, are getting their guts ripped out and replaced.

The company announced today that it was replacing its own software with new adaptive-learning programs that adjust the course to the student. The new software, from a company called Knewton, has interactive tutors that lead students through mastery of each skill, giving short quizzes and offering additional help, such as explanatory text or videos, tailored to each student’s needs. In large classes, students get such help—or can skip concepts they know well—without asking the instructor to intervene. And instructors get constant feedback on how particular students are doing compared to the rest of the class, or even similar classes at other institutions.

Pearson provides the content, and Knewton’s program will control how it is delivered. (Instructors have the ability to set their own priorities and add their own material.) The two companies plan to begin beta testing this fall and to have programs ready for the fall semester of 2012.

Instructors greeted the news with a mix of enthusiasm and concern that changes would harm a product that they already like. “I’ve been very pleased with MyWritingLab,” said David A. Webster, coordinator of development education at Marion Technical College, in Ohio. “I hope they don’t break it!”

He teaches a course called “Preparation for College Writing” and says his students do much better after working with the software. But he also said that Knewton’s ability to customize help choices sounded like a real improvement over the existing product.

Gary S. Buckley, a professor of physical sciences at Cameron University, in Oklahoma, uses Pearson’s Mastering Chemistry and Mastering Physics in introductory courses, and said that “now the software doesn’t really pay attention to the individual student. Everyone gets the same problems. So this sounds like a good change.”

Continued in article

Learning Management System (LMS) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_management_system

"Freeing the LMS," by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed, October 13, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/10/13/pearson_announces_free_learning_management_system

Last year, the media conglomerate Pearson controlled a shade over 1 percent of the market for learning management systems (LMS) among traditional colleges, according to the Campus Computing Project.

This year, Pearson is taking aim at the other 99 percent.

In a move that could shake the e-learning industry, the company today unveiled a new learning management system that colleges will be able to use for free, without having to pay any of the licensing or maintenance costs normally associated with the technology.

Pearson’s new platform, called OpenClass, is only in beta phase; the company does not expect to take over the LMS market overnight. But by moving to turn the learning management platform into a free commodity — like campus e-mail has become for many institutions — Pearson is striking at the foundation of an industry that currently bills colleges for hundreds of millions per year.

“I think that the announcement really marks another, and important, nail in the coffin of the proprietary last-generation learning management system,” says Lev Gonick, CIO of Case Western Reserve University.

By providing complimentary customer support and cloud-based hosting, OpenClass purports to underprice even the nominally free open-source platforms that recently have been gaining ground in the LMS market. Hundreds of colleges have defected from Blackboard -- whose full-service, proprietary platform has ruled the market for more than a decade -- in favor of open-source alternatives that cost nothing to license. But while the source code for these systems is free, colleges have had to pay developers to modify the code and keep the system stable.

OpenClass can be used “absolutely for free,” says Adrian Sannier, senior vice president of product at Pearson. “No licensing costs, no costs for maintenance, and no costs for hosting. So this is a freehttp://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm r offer than Moodle is. It’s a freer offer than any other in the space.”

Outflanking the Market

Pearson, which sells a variety of higher-education products and services, including textbooks, e-tutoring software and online courseware, has had success selling its own proprietary learning management system, LearningStudio (formerly known as eCollege), to for-profit colleges. But the company has made fewer inroads with the much larger nonprofit sector. With OpenClass, Sannier says Pearson is taking aim at “traditional institutions around the country where professors are the ones making the decisions about what’s happening in their classrooms” — a demographic that has long been Blackboard’s stronghold.

“Our intention is to serve every corner of that instructor-choice marketplace,” says Sannier.

Pearson says it is taking a strategic cue from Google, which offers its cloud-based e-mail and applications suite to colleges for free in an effort to secure “mind share” among the students and professors who use it. Like Google with its Apps for Education — with which Pearson has partnered for its beta launch — the media conglomerate is hoping to use OpenClass as a loss leader that points students and professors toward those products that the company’s higher ed division sees as the future of its bottom line: e-textbooks, e-tutoring software, and other “digital content” products.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on the history of Learning Management Systems (also called Course Management Systems) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

"To Monitor Online Testing, Western Governors U. Gives Students Webcams," by Alexandra Rice, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 2, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/to-monitor-online-testing-western-governors-u-gives-students-webcams/34099

Welcome packets for students at Western Governors University now include a free Webcam, part of an extensive monitoring program used by the online university to make sure test-takers are who they say they are.

At Western Governors, the average student is 36 years old, has a family, and takes a full course load on top of holding a full-time job. Because it’s convenient for them to be able to take tests from home, students have embraced the technology, says Janet W. Schnitz, associate provost for assessment and interim provost at the university.

The university, which first started handing out cameras in July 2010, now has over 30,000 Web cams in use.

Before 2009, when the university introduced its Webcam pilot program, students had to go to one of 6,000 on-site assessment centers to take a test. For many students, this could involve taking time off work, securing a babysitter, and then driving several hours to the center.

“Trying to get to different sites to take these exams—that took up to four hours to complete—was quite onerous on the students,” Ms. Schnitz said. “So we began looking for a secure environment that would allow us to identify the student and provide a secure testing environment that was more conducive to the lifestyle of our adult students.”

The camera, which is mounted on a stick, is not the standard Web camera found on a computer. Standard Webcams, Ms. Schnitz said, provide only a view of the student. With this camera, proctors can see the computer screen, the students’ hands and profile, and a 180-degree view of the room.

While the university is still working out some bugs in the system, such as full compatibility with Apple products and issues with satellite Internet connections, Ms. Schnitz says the transition has been fairly seamless and beneficial for both the university and its students. The system the university uses, known as Webassessor, was developed by the online testing technology company Kryterion.

“The one thing I think that really helps us the most is that they have full streaming and live proctors who are actually watching the students during the entire testing event,” Ms. Schnitz said. “We really felt that it was important that it not be viewed after the fact, and that it be viewed during the actual testing.”

The idea behind the live proctor is twofold: to have someone monitoring students and checking for any aberrant behavior and also to have someone there in case a student has a technical issue.

Students’ dress is another issue the university is still working out when using the cameras, Ms. Schnitz said. Before beginning an exam, the student’s hair has to be pulled fully behind his or her ears to make sure they don’t have any device feeding them answers. For some students, such as those who wear headscarves for religious reasons, this can present a problem. In those cases, the university can arrange for female proctors or students can choose to take the test at one of the on-site centers.

The university administers roughly 2,000 of the 10,000 tests it gives each month at physical testing centers, and the rest through the Webcam system, according to Ms. Schnitz.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Since WGU is a competency-based university, instructors do not assign final grades. This makes testing integrity doubly important since final grades are based upon examination performance throughout the term.

Onsite Versus Online Education (including controls for online examinations and assignments) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#OnsiteVersusOnline

"MIT Expands 'Open' Courses, Adds Completion Certificates," Inside Higher Ed, December 19, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2011/12/19/mit-expands-open-courses-adds-completion-certificates

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- which pioneered the idea of making course materials free online -- today announced a major expansion of the idea, with the creation of MITx, which will provide for interaction among students, assessment and the awarding of certificates of completion to students who have no connection to MIT.

MIT is also starting a major initiative -- led by Provost L. Rafael Reif -- to study online teaching and learning.

The first course through MITx is expected this spring. While the institute will not charge for the courses, it will charge what it calls "a modest fee" for the assessment that would lead to a credential. The credential will be awarded by MITx and will not constitute MIT credit. The university also plans to continue MIT OpenCourseWare, the program through which it makes course materials available online.

An FAQ from MIT offers more details on the new program.

While MIT has been widely praised for OpenCourseWare, much of the attention in the last year from the "open" educational movement has shifted to programs like the Khan Academy (through which there is direct instruction provided, if not yet assessment) and an initiative at Stanford University that makes courses available -- courses for which some German universities are providing academic credit. The new initiative would appear to provide some of the features (instruction such as offered by Khan, and certification that some are creating for the Stanford courses) that have been lacking in OpenCourseWare.

Video:  Open Education for an Open World
45-minute Video from the Long-Time President of MIT --- http://18.9.60.136/video/816

Bob Jensen's threads on open-share courses, lectures, videos, and course materials from prestigious universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Question
Is a MIT online certificate worth more than most any comparable course grade from a North American college or university?

"Will MITx Disrupt Higher Education?" by Robert Talbert, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 20, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2011/12/20/will-mitx-disrupt-higher-education/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

MIT has been doing online access to education a lot longer than most people, largely due to their invaluable OpenCourseWare project. (Here’s an interview MIT did with me last year on how OCW strongly influenced my inverted-classroom MATLAB course.) Now they are poised to go to the next level by launching an online system called MITx in Spring 2012 that provides credentialing as well as content:

Mr. Reif and Anant Agarwal, director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, said M.I.T.x would start this spring — perhaps with just one course — but would expand to include many more courses, as OpenCourseWare has done. [...]

The M.I.T.x classes, he said, will have online discussions and forums where students can ask questions and, often, have them answered by others in the class.

While access to the software will be free, there will most likely be an “affordable” charge, not yet determined, for a credential.

“I think for someone to feel they’re earning something, they ought to pay something, but the point is to make it extremely affordable,” Mr. Reif said. “The most important thing is that it’ll be a certificate that will clearly state that a body sanctioned by M.I.T. says you have gained mastery.”

The official FAQ reveals a couple of additional points. First, the content of MITx courses will be free — which seems to imply that MITx course content will be different than OCW course content, and not just a certification layer on top of existing resources — and you’ll only pay money for the certificate. Second, there will be no admissions process. If you want a course, you just take it and then pay for the credentialing if you feel like you’re up to it.

I think this last point about having no admissions process may be the most significant piece of MITx. It seems to represent a complete shift from the traditional way of providing access to higher education. As far as I can tell, there will not even be a system of checking prerequisites for MITx courses. If that’s so, then if you feel you can step into, say, an Algorithms class and keep up with the material and demonstrate your mastery, then nobody at MIT will care if you haven’t had the right courses in basic programming, data structures, discrete math, or whatever. MIT is basically saying, we won’t be picky about who we let take these courses — if you can afford it and live up to our standards, we’re happy to credential you.

Of course there are a lot of questions about MITx that are yet to be answered. What is the “modest fee” they plan to charge, and is it really affordable? How exactly will the credentialing process work? (It’s interesting that the certification will be handled by a non-profit organization to be formed within MIT. Is this a kind of outsourcing of grading?) How will one “demonstrate mastery” and what will MITx define as “mastery” in courses that are not strictly skills-based? Will there eventually be a full enough slate of courses offered to make the whole system compelling for learners? And perhaps most importantly, what will employers, graduate schools, and even undergraduate institutions make of applicants who come in with some of these MITx certifications? Without external buy-in, MITx will likely be just another continuing education program like hundreds of others.

We’ll hear a lot more about this in the future, but for now this seems to have the potential to be genuinely disruptive in higher education. What do you think?

"MIT Expands 'Open' Courses, Adds Completion Certificates," Inside Higher Ed, December 19, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2011/12/19/mit-expands-open-courses-adds-completion-certificates

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- which pioneered the idea of making course materials free online -- today announced a major expansion of the idea, with the creation of MITx, which will provide for interaction among students, assessment and the awarding of certificates of completion to students who have no connection to MIT.

MIT is also starting a major initiative -- led by Provost L. Rafael Reif -- to study online teaching and learning.

The first course through MITx is expected this spring. While the institute will not charge for the courses, it will charge what it calls "a modest fee" for the assessment that would lead to a credential. The credential will be awarded by MITx and will not constitute MIT credit. The university also plans to continue MIT OpenCourseWare, the program through which it makes course materials available online.

An FAQ from MIT offers more details on the new program.

While MIT has been widely praised for OpenCourseWare, much of the attention in the last year from the "open" educational movement has shifted to programs like the Khan Academy (through which there is direct instruction provided, if not yet assessment) and an initiative at Stanford University that makes courses available -- courses for which some German universities are providing academic credit. The new initiative would appear to provide some of the features (instruction such as offered by Khan, and certification that some are creating for the Stanford courses) that have been lacking in OpenCourseWare.

Bob Jensen's threads on open source video and course materials from prestigious universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology in general ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

THE COLLEGE OF 2020: STUDENTS  ---
https://www.chronicle-store.com/Store/ProductDetails.aspx?CO=CQ&ID=76319&PK=N1S1009

Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on online training and education alternatives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm

Distance Education.org or DistanceEducation.Org is a Great Helper Site
Ben Pheiffer in San Antonio forwarded this link to a terrific listing (with pricing estimates) of online training and education degree programs and courses from respectable universities --- http://www.distance-education.org/Courses/
Both graduate and undergraduate degree programs are listed as well as training courses (some free).

Free online tutorials in various disciplines --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm/#Tutorials

Education & Learning: Asia Society --- http://www.asiasociety.org/education-learning

Latino Distance Education
American RadioWorks: Rising by Degrees [iTunes] http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/latino_college/index.html

The Master List of FreeOnline College Courses --- http://universitiesandcolleges.org/

US News Rankings --- http://www.usnews.com/rankings

US News Top Online Education Programs --- http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education
Do not confuse this with the US News project to evaluate for-profit universities --- a project hampered by refusal of many for-profit universiteis to provide data

Methodology: Online Bachelor's Degree Rankings ---
http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2012/01/09/methodology-online-bachelors-degree-rankings

. . .

Data collection commenced on July 14, 2011, using a password-protected online system. Drawing from its Best Colleges universe of regionally accredited bachelor's granting institutions, U.S.News & World Report E-mailed surveys to the 1,765 regionally accredited institutions it determined had offered bachelor's degree programs in 2010.

Continued in article

"'U.S. News' Sizes Up Online-Degree Programs, Without Specifying Which Is No. 1," by Nick DeSantis, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 10, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/US-News-Sizes-Up/130274/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

U.S. News & World Report has published its first-ever guide to online degree programs—but distance-education leaders looking to trumpet their high rankings may find it more difficult to brag about how they placed than do their colleagues at residential institutions.

Unlike the magazine's annual rankings of residential colleges, which cause consternation among many administrators for reducing the value of each program into a single headline-friendly number, the new guide does not provide lists based on overall program quality; no university can claim it hosts the top online bachelor's or online master's program. Instead, U.S. News produced "honor rolls" highlighting colleges that consistently performed well across the ranking criteria.

Eric Brooks, a U.S. News data research analyst, said the breakdown of the rankings into several categories was intentional; his team chose its categories based on areas with enough responses to make fair comparisons.

"We're only ranking things that we felt the response rates justified ranking this year," he said.

The rankings, which will be published today, represent a new chapter in the 28-year history of the U.S. News guide. The expansion was brought on by the rapid growth of online learning. More than six million students are now taking at least one course online, according to a recent survey of more than 2,500 academic leaders by the Babson Survey Research Group and the College Board.

U.S. News ranked colleges with bachelor's programs according to their performance in three categories: student services, student engagement, and faculty credentials. For programs at the master's level, U.S. News added a fourth category, admissions selectivity, to produce rankings of five different disciplines: business, nursing, education, engineering, and computer information technology.

To ensure that the inaugural rankings were reliable, Mr. Brooks said, U.S. News developed its ranking methodology after the survey data was collected. Doing so, he said, allowed researchers to be fair to institutions that interpreted questions differently.

Some distance-learning experts criticized that technique, however, arguing that the methodology should have been established before surveys were distributed.

Russell Poulin, deputy director of research and analysis for the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies, which promotes online education as part of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, said that approach allowed U.S. News to ask the wrong questions, resulting in an incomplete picture of distance-learning programs.

"It sort of makes me feel like I don't know who won the baseball game, but I'll give you the batting average and the number of steals and I'll tell you who won," he said. Mr. Poulin and other critics said any useful rankings of online programs should include information on outcomes like retention rates, employment prospects, and debt load—statistics, Mr. Brooks said, that few universities provided for this first edition of the U.S. News rankings. He noted that the surveys will evolve in future years as U.S. News learns to better tailor its questions to the unique characteristics of online programs.

W. Andrew McCollough, associate provost for information technology, e-learning, and distance education at the University of Florida, said he was "delighted" to discover that his institution's bachelor's program was among the four chosen for honor-roll inclusion. He noted that U.S. News would have to customize its questions in the future, since he found some of them didn't apply to online programs. He attributed that mismatch to the wide age distribution and other diverse demographic characteristics of the online student body.

The homogeneity that exists in many residential programs "just doesn't exist in the distance-learning environment," he said. Despite the survey's flaws, Mr. McCollough said, the effort to add to the body of information about online programs is helpful for prospective students.

Turnout for the surveys varied, from a 50 percent response rate among nursing programs to a 75 percent response rate among engineering programs. At for-profit institutions—which sometimes have a reputation for guarding their data closely—cooperation was mixed, said Mr. Brooks. Some, like the American Public University System, chose to participate. But Kaplan University, one of the largest providers of online education, decided to wait until the first rankings were published before deciding whether to join in, a spokesperson for the institution said.

Though this year's rankings do not make definitive statements about program quality, Mr. Brooks said the research team was cautious for a reason and hopes the new guide can help students make informed decisions about the quality of online degrees.

"We'd rather not produce something in its first year that's headline-grabbing for the wrong reasons," he said.

---

'Honor Roll' From 'U.S. News' of Online Graduate Programs in Business

Institution	Teaching Practices and Student Engagement	Student Services and Technology	Faculty Credentials and Training	Admissions Selectivity
Arizona State U., W.P. Carey School of Business	24	32	37	11
Arkansas State U.	9	21	1	36
Brandman U. (Part of the Chapman U. system)	40	24	29	n/a
Central Michigan U.	11	3	56	9
Clarkson U.	4	24	2	23
Florida Institute of Technology	43	16	23	n/a
Gardner-Webb U.	27	1	15	n/a
George Washington U.	20	9	7	n/a
Indiana U. at Bloomington, Kelley School of Business	29	19	40	3
Marist College	67	23	6	5
Quinnipiac U.	6	4	13	16
Temple U., Fox School of Business	39	8	17	34
U. of Houston-Clear Lake	8	21	18	n/a
U. of Mississippi	37	44	20	n/a

Source: U.S. News & World Report

Jensen Comment
I don't know why the largest for-profit universities that generally provide more online degrees than the above universities combined are not included in the final outcomes. For example, the University of Phoenix alone as has over 600,000 students, most of whom are taking some or all online courses.

My guess is that most for-profit universities are not forthcoming with the data requested by US News analysts. Note that the US News condition that the set of online programs to be considered be regionally accredited does not exclude many for-profit universities. For example, enter in such for-profit names as "University of Phoenix" or "Capella University" in the "College Search" box at
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/university-of-phoenix-20988
These universities are included in the set of eligible regionally accredited online degree programs to be evaluated. They just did not do well in the above "Honor Roll" of outcomes for online degree programs.

For-profit universities may have shot themselves in the foot by not providing the evaluation data to US News for online degree program evaluation. For example, one of the big failings of most for-profit online degree programs is in undergraduate "Admissions Selectivity."

Bob Jensen's threads on distance education training and education alternatives are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on ranking controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings