Thursday, January 31, 2013

Friedman's hope: Ines and Daniel, ModPo people

Thomas Friedman's column on the MOOC phenomenon - a follow-up to an earlier piece he published last spring - expresses great optimism: "LORD knows there’s a lot of bad news in the world today to get you down, but there is one big thing happening that leaves me incredibly hopeful about the future, and that is the budding revolution in global online higher education." He mentions ModPo without identifying it clearly, but Ines Cifuentes, a ModPo student, explains further in her comment in response to the Friedman article.


Thursday, January 24, 2013

material is difficult, but spirit of curiosity produces good results


University of Pennsylvania professor Al Filreis, who teaches Modern & Contemporary American Poetry, says that teaching online has given him his “most extraordinary pedagogical experience” in 30 years of teaching. “The course is rigorous and fast-paced, and the material is difficult, but the spirit of curiosity and investigation among the students produced very good results,” he says. “Several eminent poetry critics joined the course to rate the quality of the students' critical writing and came away very impressed -- and surprised. We discovered that a qualitative, interactive humanities course can indeed work in the MOOC format."

Quoted from "Learning From MOOCs," by Andrew Ng.

Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Kelly Writers House in 1908


3805 Locust Walk (what is now Kelly Writers House) in 1908.