By Tara García Mathewson, Education Dive Clint Schmidt, COO of Bloc, questions partnerships between coding bootcamps and accredited institutions as a "dangerous backdoor to access federal student loans." In an article for LinkedIn, Bloc argues that funding opportunity would give bootcamps a chance to go after easy money, focusing less on student outcomes, like some for-profit colleges have been accused of doing. He suggests one accountability measure — asking a board of experienced developers to review portfolios of bootcamp graduates and ensure they actually got the job-ready skills they meant to pay for. http://www.educationdive.com/news/bootcamp-coo-questions-why-peer-programs-are-chasing-accreditation/407233/ Share on Facebook

by Carl Straumsheim, Inside Higher Ed As massive open online course providers specialize in disciplines and delivery modes, universities are looking for new opportunities to experiment. The trend appears to be benefiting edX. Many colleges have "double-dipped" by joining both Coursera and edX, two major MOOC providers, since MOOCs went mainstream in 2012. For example, the California Institute of Technology, Rice University and the University of Toronto all partnered with Coursera in July 2012 and then joined edX in 2013. Similarly, Peking University in Beijing first partnered with edX in May 2013, then with Coursera three months later. But among colleges and universities in the U.S., movement from one MOOC platform to the next is a one-way street. According to an Inside Higher Ed analysis, at least 10 of the institutions that first partnered with Coursera have since joined edX. Not a single edX institution has gone the other way. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/10/13/colleges-explain-why-they-double-dipped-moocs Share on Facebook

by Jeff Swiatek, Indianapolis Star Eli Lilly University? That’s pushing it. But the drug maker’s inner academic side might be coming out. Eli Lilly and Co. said Tuesday it has developed a college-level course that will be offered at participating colleges. The online course, not surprisingly, deals with drug discovery and development. Lilly said it developed the graduate-level course with experts at 10 academic institutions. Lilly footed the bill, which it didn’t disclose, and the academic experts donated their time, said Lilly spokesman Mark Taylor. Lilly will unveil the e-learning course, called "Making Medicines: The Process of Drug Development," at an American Osteopathic Association conference in Florida this weekend and launch the course in 2016. It will be offered as an elective at participating colleges. http://www.indystar.com/story/money/2015/10/13/eli-lilly-starts-online-course-drug-development/73879342/ Share on Facebook

Elizabeth Mulherrin, Evolllution Institutions can improve their engagement with adult students by focusing on collecting and analyzing data analytics, which in turn can have a significant impact on student outcomes and success. The first installment of this series, Personalization at Scale: Two Institutional Journeys, described the similarities and differences between two adult-serving online institutions, and the organizational capacity for leveraging data and technology to support learners. UMUC and Capella are continuously exploring how data analytics can identify and support learners’ needs, especially in the first term, to set them up for success. Both UMUC and Capella use internally developed and third-party tools as part of this process, and both also leverage the learning management systems (LMS) that their institutions use to deliver orientation and similar courses. By using the same LMS that is used for academic courses, learners have the opportunity to become familiar with the technology that they will use throughout their degree program. http://evolllution.com/technology/metrics/personalization-at-scale-using-metrics-to-improve-the-student-experience/ Share on Facebook

By Tara García Mathewson, Education Dive University of Toledo professors Claire Stuve and Kevin Gibbs are highlighting the importance of a synchronous component to online courses, of monitoring student interaction, and of collecting data for constant improvement when aiming for student success online. In a piece for eCampus News, the duo write that synchronous element gives students a chance to interact with their peers and instructors, virtually, in real time, meeting the needs of traditional and nontraditional students with recorded interactions to be reviewed later. Tracking how students engage with course materials, how long they watch videos, and whether they review gives instructors data for early warnings and helps crystallize the power of technology in student outcomes. http://www.educationdive.com/news/u-of-toledo-instructors-identify-keys-to-online-learning-success/407486/ Share on Facebook

By PAUL SULLIVAN, NY Times Gqyatri Ganesh, director of development at the Christian Hospital, a rural hospital in Mungeli, India, says she hopes to get better at tapping into the international network of donors that could help sustain the hospital. Paolo Pagaduan, a project manager with the World Wildlife Fund in the Philippines, says he is trying to learn a new role at the organization. Both have signed up for courses at the new nonprofit group Philanthropy University, started by Amr Al-Dabbagh, a Saudi businessman and philanthropist. Mr. Dabbagh donated several million dollars to see if a learning initiative could improve the lives of 100 million people by 2020. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/17/your-money/online-university-helps-philanthropic-groups-and-their-leaders.html?_r=0 Share on Facebook

by Esme Nicholson, WBEZ A new university in Berlin is exclusively geared to refugees. Kiron University relies on existing online courses and aims to be tuition-free and accessible to asylum seekers worldwide. Markus Kressler pulls up a virtual seminar on mechanical engineering, from the Georgia Institute of Technology, on his laptop. The 25-year-old is a co-founder of Kiron University, a Berlin-based program for refugees that taps into open-source online lectures from other universities. Kiron University students take courses online for the first two years, working toward a bachelor’s degree while they apply for asylum and acquire the paperwork and qualifications needed to enter a partner university, local to where they are, to complete the degree. "Basically, everyone can already log into these courses," Kressler says. "What we do is we just take these courses, bundle them into degree programs and make cooperation with real universities so that they also recognize these courses in order to really get a degree in the end." http://www.wbez.org/news/migrants-pour-germany-launches-online-university-them-113386 Share on Facebook

By Roger Riddell, Education Dive The U.S. Department of Education on Wednesday unveiled the Educational Quality Through Innovation Partnerships (EQUIP) program, an experimental pathway to Title IV funding for partnerships between higher ed institutions and nontraditional programs. The program has been brewing for some time under the experimental sites initiative, though it will remain limited to about 10 applications from applicable partnerships. Likely candidates for participation in the pilot include coding bootcamps, MOOC providers, and various short-term certificate and corporate training programs, and according to Inside Higher Ed, inclusion will also give institutions freedom from a federal aid ban on colleges that outsource over half of their content or instruction to an unaccredited third party. http://www.educationdive.com/news/ed-dept-pilot-opens-aid-to-alternative-credentialing/407333/ Share on Facebook

by Beth Porter, TechCrunch People often express worry that the relative anonymity of online learning environments and the disconnected nature of being in a MOOC (massive online open course) leads to more opportunities for academic dishonesty and outright cheating. However, emerging and improving technologies may prove to offer more — not less — protection from would-be cheaters. All online learning environments collect data — copious amounts — about their learners, and software is especially good at revealing patterns that may signal that cheating is happening. Knowing that you might get caught can be a powerful deterrent. Likewise, several new technologies seek to prevent cheating from the outset. These include virtual proctoring, identity verification and problem randomization — all of which we explore in this article. http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/15/how-software-helps-keep-online-learners-honest/ Share on Facebook

By Knight Center Hundreds of judges and other jurists (prosecutors, attorney, lawyers, etc) from Latin American and Caribbean countries have already signed up for a six-week Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in Spanish on the "International Legal Framework on Freedom of Expression, Access to Information and the Safety of Journalists." The course that starts on October 26 is offered by UNESCO and the Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in partnership with the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas at Austin. https://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/00-16360-judges-can-take-online-course-freedom-expression-offered-unesco-and-knight-center Share on Facebook