Cal State U Expands MOOC Experiment

San Jose State University plans to widen its relationship with edX, the nonprofit provider of massive open online courses, and the California State University system is encouraging similar experiments on 11 other campuses. The moves were announced on Wednesday, just two semesters after San Jose State began a pilot project with edX to improve teaching and learning in its own classrooms. The university will incorporate three to five new edX courses into its local curriculum next fall, including courses in the humanities and social sciences. San Jose State last fall used material from an edX course, “Circuits & Electronics,” as part of a “flipped classroom” experiment in its own introductory course in electrical engineering. The university offered three versions of the course: two conventional face-to-face sections and one “blended” section, in which students watched edX videos on their own and then participated in group activities, sans lecturing, during class time. The pass rates in the two conventional sections were 55 percent and 59 percent. In the “flipped” section with the edX videos, 91 percent of students passed. The second semester of trials, currently under way, has also produced encouraging results, said Mohammad H. Qayoumi, president of San Jose State, in an interview. But data from those trials are not yet available because the courses are still in session. The article is in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus blog.

Homework Insufficient In USA Secondary schools

 Guest Blogger: Will Fitzhugh

The most important variable in student academic achievement

is, of course, student academic work.

 (U.S.) Public High School kids: [143,000 surveyed) in 2008

 82.7% spend 5 or fewer hours a week on  written homework…42.5% spend an hour or less each week on homework…

 Indiana University’s High School Survey of Student Engagement]Korean students spend, on average, 15 hours a week on homework,

added to ten hours a week of hagwon after school = 25 hours a week.

[i.e. 25 times the time some U.S. HS students spend, or 

at least 5 times as much as the great majority of U.S. HS students…]

CA. Community Colleges Unveil New Scorecard

by Kathryn Baron/EdSource Today

Students who start community college prepared to take college-level courses have a better than 70 percent chance of earning a degree or certificate or transferring to a four-year college within six years. The outcome is significantly worse for students placed in remedial math or science, with barely 41 percent achieving those goals, according to the first-ever student success scorecards released Tuesday by the systemwide chancellor’s office. The scorecards provide in-depth information for each of the state’s 112 community colleges including student demographics, completion rates, career technical education, and indicators of likely success, such as the percentage of students who completed 30 units after six years. “The scorecard is probably a historic tool for the community colleges,” said Constance Carroll, chancellor of the San Diego Community College District, during a telephone call with reporters. “What is critically important about the scorecard is that the groups of students can be subdivided in almost any way so that very specific strategies can be used to insure their improvement.” Boosting success rates is critical in the current economy, said state Community College Chancellor Brice Harris, because “by 2018, two-thirds of the jobs in California will require some level of education beyond high school.” The scorecards grew out of the community college Student Success Task Force, whose 22 recommendations were approved by the systemwide Board of Governors last year. Several months later, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 1456, the Student Success Act of 2012,

Interstate Credit Mechanism For MOOCS

A group of higher-education leaders, accreditors, and regulators led by former Education Secretary Richard Riley is seeking to streamline distance-education and state-authorization regulations to make it easier and more affordable for colleges to enroll students across the country. The group’s report proposes a plan for interstate reciprocity, based on the voluntary participation of states and colleges. (Chronicle of Higher Education, 04/11/13)

Why Do Catholic Colleges Have Higher Completion?

Career Pathways: A Strategy to Increase Black and Latino Four-Year Graduation Rates
by Robert Cherry & Emily Horowitz
This commentary highlights findings from a study recently completed comparing minority graduation rates of NYC-area Catholic colleges and public universities. The authors argue that the reason why the Catholic colleges are doing better than the CUNY schools is because of a difference in college cultures, and, in particular, an emphasis on career development. Their surveys and interviews provide evidence that the NYC-area Catholic colleges offer a model to schools wishing to improve graduation rates among minority and first-generation populations.

Source: Teachers College Record

Transfer From 4 Year to 2 Year College Is Risky Business

Reverse transfer report from the National Student Clearinghouse
Reverse transfer students (specifically, those who move from four-year to two-year institutions outside of summer months) are the subject of this report from the National Student Clearinghouse. According to the report, more than half of the examined reverse transfer students did not return to the four-year sector by the end of the six-year study period, and only one in 10 complete a degree. Check out the full report for more details on the pathways and outcomes of this student population. 

Next Generation k-12 Science Standards Will Impact Postsecondary Education

On Tuesday, April 9, the final Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), a new set of voluntary, rigorous, and internationally benchmarked standards for K-12 science education, were released.

 Twenty six states and their broad-based teams worked together for two years with a 41-member writing team and partners to develop the standards which identify science and engineering practices and content that all K-12 students should master in order to be fully prepared for college, careers and citizenship. The NGSS were built upon a vision for science education established by the Framework for K-12 Science Education, published by the National Academies’ National Research Council in 2011.

These standards are much more interdisciplinary with a focus on how insights from many disciplines fit together into a coherent understanding. But college entrance requirements remain organized around discrete disciplines like biology and chemistry as separate subjects.

$10,000 College Degree Hard To Get In 4 years

Designing $10,000 Degrees Tests Colleges
Since Texas Gov. Rick Perry challenged institutions to create $10,000 degrees, 13 such programs have been established across the state. But cost creep has marked some of the programs. To attain the degrees at their lowest advertised cost, students must clear significant hurdles — accruing college credits while in high school, maintaining good grades, taking heavy course loads, or receiving federal aid. (San Antonio Express-News, 04/07/13)

Public Financial Support For College Drops 13% In Decade.

STUDENTS FOOTING MORE OF THE BILL FOR HIGHER EDUCATION
The “public” component of public higher education is rapidly eroding, with public colleges now getting more than 43 percent of their revenues from student tuition as opposed to state and local taxpayers, compared to less than 30 percent as recently as a decade ago.The figures come from a new report out Friday offering the latest snapshot of who pays the bill for America’s public colleges and universities, which educate roughly 70 percent of students. SHEEO, a group representing state higher education officials, finds that amid surging demand for college, per-student state and local funding for higher education has fallen 12.5 percent over the last five years and reached its lowest point in the 25 years of the study. The article is in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Why Community Colleges Grew From 1969-2002

The Growth of Community Colleges in the American States: An Application of Count Models to Institutional Growth
by William R. Doyle & Alexander V. Gorbunov
The authors use a panel data set covering all 50 states from the years 1969-2002 to investigate the growth of community colleges. They find that community college expansion was driven in large part by changes in state populations, while growth was slowed by competition from other institutions.