Rethinking Professor Snodgrass

A recent posting on this blog replayed President Yudof's comment that online courses have to be more than putting a camera in the back of the room and letting Professor Snodgrass drone on. You can replay his comments below for your listening pleasure.  But maybe the Snodgrass approach has merit at this time.

Note that UC-Berkeley, among other universities, has put courses that essentially are video recordings of courses on YouTube for free. Anyone can view them.  It's a relatively costless production method.

You can find one such course at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMV45tHCYNI&list=EC4BBB74C7D2A1049C

At a modest cost, those now "taking" such courses could be offered exams along the lines of the old 1950s Sunrise Semester TV model that we have also noted in past postings. The simple fact is that no one really knows how online courses will evolved. You can find articles speculating about how the various platforms will cover costs and what the relationship will be between universities providing course content will have with those platforms in recent articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

http://chronicle.com/article/How-EdX-Plans-to-Earn-and/137433/

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/competing-mooc-providers-expand-into-new-territory-and-each-others/42463

Before making commitments that may be difficult to unravel, why not start with Professor Snodgrass and the simple approach?  He may be droning but it's cheap and does not lock us into some expensive commitment that may prove not be be viable.

Our original Snodgrass post is at http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2013/02/blame-it-on-professor-snodgrass.html

Our most recent Sunrise Semester TV history posting is at http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2013/01/its-your-legacy-choice-governor-brown.html [But there were other posts before going back to 2010 which you can find using the blog search engine and "sunrise."  We also noted that before Snodgrass was on TV, he was giving credit courses by radio in the 1920s:

http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2013/02/more-on-new-idea-of-distance-now-online.html]

UCLA History: Sub

A captured miniature Japanese submarine was exhibited in December 1942 at a UCLA-USC football game in the Coliseum.

The Wrong Kind of Hike

CalPERS enrollees receive notice of long-term care rate hikes

2/20/13, Sacramento Bee, Jon Ortiz [excerpt]

With an 85 percent premium hike looming, government workers and retirees covered by CalPERS' costliest long-term care insurance policies face a crucial decision: Swallow the increase or get out of a program they have been paying into for years. The reality of the increase literally came home this week as letters from CalPERS hit the mailboxes of 148,000 policyholders. The fund's board last year voted to raise premiums for the 90 percent of insured members who bought the top-tier plan – lifetime coverage and inflation protection for things like nursing home and assisted-living care. Half of those policyholders are in the very highest tier and also face two small increases over the next two years before the 85 percent jump kicks in. In all, rates for them will roughly double. CalPERS says it is hiking rates to keep the insurance fund solvent long-term. Losses from higher-than-expected claims, lower-than-expected investment returns and loose underwriting standards early on forced the decision...

Full story: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/02/20/5202227/calpers-enrollees-receive-notice.html 

Does this matter for UC employees?  UC is not part of CalPERS.  But as state employees, UC employees at one time were offered the "opportunity" to subscribe to CalPERS' long-term care plan.  There is a larger lesson from this episode.  Long-term care policies are essentially a promise to provide resources for what could be an expensive future event.  But the premiums you will pay for such policies/promises are not fixed.  Moreover, you are depending on some insurance company - which between now and then may be merged, acquired, or who knows what? - to honor the policy when you may not be in a good position to appeal denials of claims.  

Long-term care insurance is truly faith-based insurance.  But if you believe...

The Less the State Pays, the Better Our Credit Rating

From the UC-Berkeley Daily Californian:

Fitch Ratings announced Thursday that bonds issued by the University of California have been rated AA+.
The UC Board of Regents has issued $1.7 billion of AA+ bonds with a stable rating outlook to be sold by negotiation the week of Feb. 25. Fitch cites the university’s exceptional reputation and successful fiscal management as primary reasons for the bonds’ high rating...  In addition to (other) positive indicators, Fitch has stated that it regards the university’s diverse revenue base as a favorable credit factor. Decreasing reliance on state funding has provided a measure of safety against future cuts...

Full article at http://www.dailycal.org/2013/02/18/fitch-assigns-uc-bonds-aa-rating/

For whatever reason, it's good to be (almost) on top of the rating scale:

Blame It on Professor Snodgrass

New York Times editorial:

...Online classes are already common in colleges, and, on the whole, the record is not encouraging. According to Columbia University’s Community College Research Center, for example, about seven million students — about a third of all those enrolled in college — are enrolled in what the center describes as traditional online courses. These typically have about 25 students and are run by professors who often have little interaction with students. Over all, the center has produced nine studies covering hundreds of thousands of classes in two states, Washington and Virginia. The picture the studies offer of the online revolution is distressing... 

Interestingly, the center found that students in hybrid classes — those that blended online instruction with a face-to-face component — performed as well academically as those in traditional classes. But hybrid courses are rare, and teaching professors how to manage them is costly and time-consuming.  The online revolution offers intriguing opportunities for broadening access to education. But, so far, the evidence shows that poorly designed courses can seriously shortchange the most vulnerable students.

Full editorial at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/opinion/the-trouble-with-online-college.html

In the meantime, while Mark Yudof and the rest of us are waiting for the revolution, we can blame the current problems on Professor Snodgrass:

 

Quick! Somebody Tell the Governor!

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Professor Leaves a MOOC in Mid-Course in Dispute Over Teaching

Students regularly drop out of massive open online courses before they come to term. For a professor to drop out is less common.

But that is what happened on Saturday in “Microeconomics for Managers,” a MOOC offered by the University of California at Irvine through Coursera. Richard A. McKenzie, an emeritus professor of enterprise and society at the university’s business school, sent a note to his students announcing that he would no longer be teaching the course, which was about to enter its fifth week.

“Because of disagreements over how to best conduct this course, I’ve agreed to disengage from it, with regret,” Mr. McKenzie wrote...

Full story at http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/category/uncategorized

We have a video from the class: 

 

Update: The LA Times version of the story is at http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/02/uc-irvine-business-professor-stops-teaching-midway-in-online-coursera-class.html 

A Different Kind of Grade Inflation

From the Orange County Register: When Jose Carrillo went through medical school at Dartmouth College a decade ago, students would have thick books weighing down their white coats with reference information in case they needed it while making rounds... Today, Carrillo is helping third-year medical students understand neurology at UCI Medical Center in Orange... (L)oaded on the iPads in the pockets of the medical students' coats is every textbook, note, flash card and question from their first two years of medical school – so much information that its equal in printed copies once covered entire tables. All that information sits on the iPad, along with an app that can access the electronic medical records of patients students interact with on their rounds, as well as the entirety of Web resources...

...(T)he medical school announced a 23 percent increase in scores, on average, on the initial test for a medical license taken by the first class to get iPads...

Full article at http://www.ocregister.com/articles/ipad-496247-medical-school.html