New Forms of College Access

21 May 2013

Public forum at Stanford School of Education, part of a seminar on "Education's Digital Future".

http://edf.stanford.edu/course/may-21-public-forum-new-forms-college-access

Interesting panel including Brian Murphy, President of De Anza. Chancellor Linda Thor was in attendance, and she said she wanted to meet with me about MOOCs.

MOOCs are seen as the new library; you may or may not read the book you check out.

Self credentialling with eportfolios.

Do we know how to engage working class students online?

Some colleges aspire to produce networks of students, I like this idea.

If we think of co-presence as a treatment, how do we dose it? It is expensive, so what value does it bring?

So far we've shown that online courses can facilitate only mastery of content.
We need to provide access to valuable learning.

Exercise: Give a hard question and take vote, then do small group discussion and vote again; everyone gets closer to the right answer. This happens even when no one votes for the right answer the first time. This shows that small group discussion promotes learning.

Murphy emphasized that we want democratically engaged students who are empowered as participants in the economy.