Saturday, February 22, 2014

Harvard and MIT Are Making EdX MOOC Data Available for Research

Harvard and MIT are making EdX MOOC data available for research. I think it could be a huge opportunity for some education researchers who are looking for data opportunities. The CHE story on it>http://chroni.cl/1fg2F2v

Competency-based Degree Programs are Ready for a Surge?

I noticed this story at Inside Highered which suggests competency-based degrees may be ready for a surge. >http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/02/21/direct-assessment-and-feds-take-competency-based-education . Competency-based implies that the student can test-out of much or all of the coursework normally required to earn a degree by passing appropriate tests or submitting completed work. Since higher education has become so expensive the demand for competency-based degrees seems to have surged. The validity of a competency-based degree depends on the validity of the methods that are used to assess the students skills and abilities, but isn't the validity of regular degree programs also dependent on that? The Inside Higher Ed story is concerned with the federal governments action in encouraging/discouraging competency-based higher education. Leading proponents of competency-based degrees include Southern New Hampshire University and Western Governors University, and I think you can count Excelsior University as a proponent too. These three institution are regionally accredited. The graduate degree program information presented on my website ( http://onlinegraduateschool.tripod.com/nfp.htm ) is focussed on online degree programs from regionally accredited institutions.

Newly Added to My Website: Online Master Degrees In Healthcare Informatics, Human Resources, Nursing, and Health Science.

Website news… I added information and links for online Master degree programs in Health Science and in Human Resources from a Catholic university in Loretto, Pennsylvania> http://onlinegraduateschool.tripod.com/nfp.htm#stf .

All the graduate degree programs presented on my website ( http://onlinegraduateschool.tripod.com/nfp.htm ) are online degree programs from regionally accredited institutions.

Has Your Website Been ... De-deprecated??

I found out that deprecated HTML on your website could hurt your websites ranking & functionality. See: http://webdesign.about.com/od/htmltags/a/bltags_deprctag.htm I was really surprised at some of the tags that are deprecated, some of which once seemed very critical and advanced, but are now hinging on the obsolete. Turns out CSS (style sheets) are now even more critical to web site design. This identifies deprecated HTML tags: http://www.codehelp.co.uk/html/deprecated.html