Posts Tagged ‘so long and thanks for all the fish’
Tuesday MOOCs, and More!
* Professor Leaves a MOOC in Mid-Course in Dispute Over Teaching. The details on this are fascinating:
Gary Matkin, the dean for distance education at Irvine, said the problem had stemmed from Mr. McKenzie’s reluctance to loosen his grip on students who he thought were not learning well in the course.“
In Professor McKenzie’s view, for instance, uninformed or superfluous responses to the questions posed in the discussion forums hobbled the serious students in their learning,” said Mr. Matkin in an e-mail.
Irvine officials, however, “felt that the course was very strong and well designed,” he said, “and that it would, indeed, meet the learning objectives of the large audience, including both those interested only in dipping into the subject and those who were seriously committed” to completing the course.
Twitter user @cjprender has a slightly different take.
* MOOCs: What if the cure is worse than the disease?
Perhaps I’m overly cynical, but I think the real root of MOOC-mania is an edifice complex on the part of university presidents and trustees. The last time I checked, the average university president in this country served for about four years before moving on to greener pastures. It used to be that the easiest way to leave a legacy on campus would be to build something. With bond financing nearly impossible to come by these days, the easiest (but not necessarily least expensive) way to build something is to create a virtual campus.
* ‘8 College Degrees with the Worst Return on Investment.’ Stupid vital careers necessary for the smooth operation and reproduction of social goods! Why don’t you get paid, son?
* Bérubé: The Humanities, Unraveled.
* These serene Chinese landscapes are actually photographs of landfills.
* Don’t Panic, But Thousands of Dolphins Were Spotted Swimming Away Off the Coast of San Diego.
* Don’t hate the player; hate the game.
* Alligator OK to eat on Lenten Fridays, archbishop clarifies.
* Forthcoming Film Is Defense of For-Profit Colleges, Critics Say.
The narration for one of the film’s early promotional trailers includes references to the “attack” on the proprietary sector by policy makers, politicians, unions, and other critics who “protect the flawed status quo.”
“Many politicians continue to manipulate the truth and serve the interests of the unions in order to keep the private sector from serving adult learners, creating a virtual, permanent underclass,” says the narrator in one clip that was on the Web site of Fractured Atlas but was replaced afterThe Chronicle inquired about it.
Unions! I hate those guys.
Scenes from the Apocalypse
Thousands of dead fish have washed up on beaches in New Jersey and Massachusetts. Low oxygen levels in warm water is believed to be to blame.
It Isn’t Over Just Because You’ve Stopped the Leak
When the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, BP was presented with a stark choice: Let the oil float to the surface, reach the shore, and allow the world to see the full scope of the damage; or hit as much of the oil as possible with toxic substances called dispersants to break it up into trillions of tiny droplets, keeping some of it from reaching the surface and making landfall—but also potentially killing more sea life than the oil might have destroyed by itself. The company chose the latter.
Mother Jones has a huge report this month focusing on both the long-term effects of the BP spill (including the overuse of dispersant primarily for PR reasons) as well as the company’s attempts to cover these unhappy facts up.
Wednesday 2!
* Tough times in America: Of the 908-person sample [of people unemployed last August], 67 percent remained unemployed but were still looking for work, and an additional 12 percent had given up and dropped out of the labor force. Only 21 percent had found jobs (only 13 percent full-time) and were currently employed. A stunning 28 percent of the newly reemployed had been looking for work for more than one year, and 6 percent for more than two years. Fifty-five percent accepted a pay cut in their new jobs; 13 percent took a cut larger than one-third of their previous salary.
* Jesus isn’t going to like this: the Sea of Galilee is out of fish. (via)
* Rachel Maddow v. oil regulators.
* And Entire Facebook Staff Laughs As Man Tightens Privacy Settings.
The Delphine Menace
Female dolphins have begun to use tools. Can invasion be far behind?
As best the researchers can tell, a single dolphin may have invented the technique relatively recently and taught it to her kin. The simple innovation dramatically changed their behavior, hunting habits and social life, the researchers found. Those that adopted it became loners who spend much more time on the hunt than others and dive more deeply in search of prey. The sponging dolphins teach the technique to all their young, but only the females seem to grasp the idea.
“It is indisputably tool use,” says primate anthropologist Craig Stanford at the University of Southern California, an authority on animal cognition and behavior who wasn’t part of the dolphin research group. “Despite the fact they lack hands and legs, dolphins make do.”
For those seeking a glimpse of our own beginnings, the dolphins of Shark Bay offer a hint of the inventive impulse when our earliest ancestors first shaped destiny by fashioning implements with their own hands.
Via MeFi.