Techdirt.: DailyDirt: The Future Of Higher Education Is Online

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DailyDirt: The Future Of Higher Education Is Online Mar 13th 2013, 00:00 Online education is set to revolutionize higher education, making it more affordable, more accessible, more efficient, and more effective. Of course, online education works only if it's done right. It's not enough to simply lecture to students through a computer. Online courses also need to be dynamic and interactive to compensate for the lack of human contact through a physical classroom. Here are some other considerations about online education. Online courses have at least two major problems to overcome. First, the student attrition rate for some online courses can be as high as 90% compared to traditional face-to-face classes. Second, online courses aren't a good fit for struggling students who need more contact with instructors to do well. [url] Stanford University and Khan Academy are experimenting with different ways to make online education more effective. Stanford has been "flipping classrooms" by making class sizes smaller, setting up interactive versions of classes online (which include pop-up quizzes every 15 minutes), and adding social media elements that let students ask questions of each other. Khan Academy has added a feature that lets students tutor other students to earn badge rewards. [url] Udacity, an online education startup founded by Sebastian Thrun, offers many college courses for free. Thrun believes that the key to effective online teaching is to have students solve problems. His teaching philosophy involves giving students quizzes, one every 2-5 minutes, that become the centerpieces of each lesson. [url] If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon. Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

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