MetaFilter posts tagged with onlineeducation

Massively Open Online Course on Planning Online Courses Collapses

Bwithh — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 10:46:51 -0800

A MOOC on planning and running MOOCs run by a leading MOOC company has spectacularly collapsed MOOC background links.... What is a MOOC? It's a looming tsunami, traditional universities are freaked out Never mind free online courses, will their for-profit versions ever make money?

Coursera Not Allowed to Provide Courses to Minnesota Residents?

Area Man — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 11:30:46 -0800

The State of Minnesota has informed Coursera that it cannot offer courses to Minnesota residents because it has not obtained permission to do so from the state. The Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus blog reports on the story here. The State was acting pursuant to the "Minnesota Private and Out-of-State Public Postsecondary Education Act," which requires schools to register with the state if they offer courses in Minnesota and requires approval if degrees are granted or the words "college" or "university" are used in the name of a school. The law was enacted in 1975 and appears to have been intended to be a consumer protection law. Noted First Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh has opined at his blog that the statute is unconstitutional, at least as applied to a web site that offers its courses for free and does not grant degrees.

Typical Pentagon boondoggle

theodolite — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 13:27:39 -0800

The Global Language Online Support System (or GLOSS), produced by the Defense Language Institute in sunny Monterey, CA, offers over six thousand free lessons in 38 languages from Albanian to Uzbek, with particular emphasis on Chinese, Persian, Russian, Korean, and various types of Arabic. The lessons include both reading and listening components and are refreshingly based on real local materials (news articles, radio segments, etc.) rather than generic templates. Important note: level 1 is considered "low intermediate" and assumes a basic knowledge of the language. For more elementary lessons, or if you just prefer your US government-produced language courses with a groovy 1970s vibe, try the ever-popular FSI Language Courses.

The Virtual Training Company Online University

Awol — Sat, 15 Apr 2000 00:52:01 -0800

The Virtual Training Company Online University is packed with free, quickly downloaded visual lessons to over 50 major programs. This site covers most major-market releases, though not Dreamweaver 3, I'm afraid. The resolution is pretty good, but if it must be perfect you may pay an extra $25 and get the works.