OLDaily

Open Learning 2019
Geoff Cain, Brainstorm in Progress, 2019/03/13

Geoff Cain notes, "From Open Learning Hub: “Open Learning ’19, a cMOOC about open learning now in its third iteration will begin on March 17th and run for three weeks. Week 1 will be preceded by a “pre-cMOOC” week for anyone who is new to connected learning.” Worth a look.

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FutureLearn’s Unlimited: One Price for the Entire Catalog
Dhawal Shah, Class Central, 2019/03/13

As reported in Class Central: "FutureLearn, the UK-based MOOC provider, just launched a new plan that lets learners pay a single price to access most of FutureLearn’s catalog. Unlimited costs $269 and gives users access to the catalog for a single year and does not automatically roll over." That's a bit cheaper than Lynda, but not much, and within the range of other bundled-course plans. As Dhawal Shah says, "Effectively speaking, FutureLearn is drastically slashing their prices with this newest model."

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Inside the Shadowy, Totally Legal World of High-Priced College Consultants
Dana Goldstein, Jack Healy, New York Times, 2019/03/13

The tagline for this post says it all: "While lawbreaking in the sector is rare, the use of money to oil the gears of the American meritocracy is not." Fallout from the scandal has been considerable, and I won't even try to summarize it. But this article looks a little deeper into the real issue: that people buy their way into an educatioon system that confers status based on which school you went to (via the social network you have thereby managed to join). That's why, for example, Harvard’s well-off outnumber low-income students 23 to 1. None of this has anything to do with education, which is why online learning doesn't directly address the inequalities created by the college system.

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Japan’s Most Interesting Newspaper Is for Recluses, by Recluses
Rohini Chaki, Atlas Obscura, 2019/03/13

This article is a little off-topic for this newsletter, but the existence of the hikikomori (a name for self-imposed recluses in Japan) speaks to an undercurrent of online culture (I have no doubt a similar phenomenon exists in other countries as well). The focus of the article is on a hikikomori newspaper. This is an effort (says the article) to recapture the narrative and counter the bad press they have received in the mainstream.

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