The Sun Rises on UC Online Education

In the 1950s, you could take college courses via "Sunrise Semester" on your black and white TV. Now we have online ed, where you don't have to get up early in the morning to watch your course and it is in color. See below:

UC takes first steps into online education (excerpt)

Lisa M. Krieger, 8/18/2011, Contra Costa Times

Going online to get a college degree has been championed as a cost-effective way to educate the masses and challenged as a cheapening of academia. Now, the online classroom is coming to the vaunted UC system, making it the nation's first top-tier university to offer undergraduate credit for cyberstudies.

…This summer, UC Berkeley tested its first pilot course: Chemistry 1A. For one student, working as a lifeguard in San Rafael, it accelerated her progress toward a joint degree in biology and economics. Another was able to live at home in Sacramento, because she registered for summer school too late to get dorm space.

...The UC regents voted to support the program last summer amid great controversy. Some faculty members and instructors worried that an online degree program could compromise the quality of undergraduate education and hurt UC's reputation.

…Every UC campus except UC San Francisco will sponsor a class. About 70 faculty members proposed ideas; 30 were selected. They are now under development and will be open to all UC students across the system in 2012. In addition to the massive lower-level introductory courses -- Spanish from UC Davis, physics from UC Irvine, politics at UCLA -- there will be experiments in upper-level, high-demand classes such as "Art, Science and Technology," and "Terrorism and War."

A team at UC Santa Barbara will analyze the results…

Full article at http://www.contracostatimes.com/top-stories/ci_18701685

Yours truly did not invent "Sunrise Semester." If the photo above does not convince you, here is an example: