Cal Tech and Penn also invest $3.7 million in Coursera, bringing the company's total funding to $22 million.

capl@washjeff.edu

Stanford University computer science professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng believe that the future of education is in free, online classes--and at least 16 universities seem to agree.

Koller and Ng's online education platform, Coursera--founded in fall 2011--has signed on a dozen new university partners in its goal to democratize education. The list of universities that have pledged to offer free courses on Coursera now includes educational powerhouses California Institute of Technology, Duke University, Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Georgia Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, Rice University, UC San Francisco, University of Edinburgh (in Scotland), University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Toronto, University of Virginia, and University of Washington. The 12 new schools join existing members Princeton University, Stanford University, University of Michigan, and University of Pennsylvania.

In addition, CalTech and Penn invested $3.7 million in the company, bringing the company's round A financing to $22 million. Other investors are venture capital firms New Enterprise Associates and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

In less than a year, Coursera says, more than 680,000 students from 190 countries have enrolled in 1.55 million courses. To date, Coursera has offered 43 courses--although the number of course offerings will likely increase significantly with the new schools now active on the platform.

The company does not yet have any revenue, Ng says. He says Coursera is exploring job placement partnerships with firms that are hiring as a potential way to monetize the company.

Another potential revenue opportunity, says Ng, will open up if universities that offer classes on Coursera start charging students for certificates of completion. Currently, Coursera classes are taught by university professors and cover the same course material as their classroom versions, but don't offer any accreditation or certification.

John McDermott is a business and culture reporter whose work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune and Playboy and on AOL.com. He recently moved from Chicago to Brooklyn, New York, to work for Inc.com.@J_M_McDermott

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Education Start-up Adds 12 New University Partners

The University of Illinois will offer seven free online classes this fall through an online education company founded by two Stanford University professors, the company announced Tuesday.

The Urbana-Champaign campus will join Princeton, Stanford, the University of Michigan and other schools that have already partnered with Coursera to offer online classes.

Chancellor Phyllis Wise said Illinois is the only land-grant university on the list, which gives it expertise that other schools lack. A faculty committee helped consider the legal and academic issues involved in the agreement, Wise said.

"It also serves our land-grant mission, to share knowledge with people who can't come to campus," Wise said.

The fall courses will include organic chemistry and microeconomics. They won't count toward a degree.

Coursera courses are free, but universities may get some revenue from charging students $30 to $80 for a certificate showing they completed a course, said company co-founder Andrew Ng. The university also could reap revenue by selling the names of high-achieving students who agree to share that information with would-be employers, Ng said.

The Coursera agreement isn't the university's first foray into online education.

In 2008, the university launched its Global Campus virtual university with a bachelor's degree-completion program for registered nurses and graduate programs in education. The school scrapped the initiative after disappointing enrollment.

Nicholas Burbules, a U of I education professor who worked on the faculty group reviewing the issues associated with the Coursera agreement, said some questions remain unanswered, including whether faculty will develop the classes as part of their regular teaching duties.

Coursera has 680,000 students from 190 countries and more than 1.55 million course enrollments, according to Daphne Koller, a co-founder of the company.

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U of Illinois to offer 7 free online courses

Scientists Create Menu For Mars Trip Planned in 2030s Scientists Create Menu For Mars Trip Planned in 2030s

Updated: Tuesday, July 17 2012 12:57 PM EDT2012-07-17 16:57:22 GMT

Updated: Tuesday, July 17 2012 12:42 PM EDT2012-07-17 16:42:34 GMT

Updated: Tuesday, July 17 2012 5:17 PM EDT2012-07-17 21:17:13 GMT

Updated: Tuesday, July 17 2012 4:38 PM EDT2012-07-17 20:38:03 GMT

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - About a month after its president briefly was fired in part for her perceived hesitation to embrace online education, the University of Virginia plans to offer free courses online to the masses. Online platform Coursera said Tuesday that U.Va. is among 12 institutions that plan to offer online courses for free under its Internet-based learning system. U.Va. said the agreement had been in the works for several months. President Teresa Sullivan said in a statement that the online classes will expand the Charlottesville school's role in global education while reinforcing its core mission of teaching, research and public service. Online higher-ed delivery was among topics that arose during Sullivan's ouster and subsequent reinstatement. Coursera's first four partner institutions were Princeton, University of Michigan, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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UVA To Offer Free Online Courses

The leadership crisis that rent the University of Virginia last month arose partly out of fear that other elite schools were moving into the vanguard of a coming digital revolution, and that U-Va. stood to be left behind.

That argument, advanced by the leader of the university governing board, turned out to be based on a faulty premise. Almost no one on campus knew at the time the breadth of the collective investment that U-Va. was already making in online education.

On Tuesday, the investment will yield a major payoff. The university is joining a prestigious online consortium led by two Stanford University professors. With one stroke, the Virginia public flagship heads toward the front of a potentially transformative movement to online learning on a global scale.

The universitys participation in Coursera, an initiative to offer free online courses to the masses, answers a criticism that loomed large in the recent power struggle in Charlottesville that began with the abrupt resignation of President Teresa Sullivan and ended with her reinstatement.

U-Va. Rector Helen Dragas, who leads the governing Board of Visitors, thought university leaders had ignored the Internet at their peril, like the music industry and media companies before them. In the months preceding her attempt to oust Sullivan, Dragas had read various articles about a coming online tsunami that would upend higher education, e-mailing one to a board colleague under the heading why we cant afford to wait.

As it turns out, university leaders werent waiting.

Officials from U-Va.s Darden School of Business first contacted Coursera in April, after learning that the Silicon Valley start-up had attracted venture capital and was expanding from Stanford to other top-tier universities, according to Milton Adams, the universitys vice provost for academic programs. A Darden delegation visited Coursera in early June, a few days before Sullivan resigned.

In the ensuing debate, Dragas singled out an apparent lack of online vision at U-Va., which, she reasoned, seemed to have no centralized approach for online education.

That critique gave new urgency to the Coursera partnership. Last week, university officials contacted Daphne Koller, co-founder of the initiative, and negotiations accelerated. U-Va. signed a contract over the weekend. Its participation will require no financial investment from U-Va., except for staff time, and yield no revenue for the university.

Founded in fall 2011, Coursera offers a platform for partner universities to experiment with a vast global audience. Students earn no college credit and the universities make no money. But many in higher education see future potential for both. More than 680,000 students from 190 countries have taken Coursera classes.

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U-Va. takes major step in online education

By Stanford Report staff

Responding to a university-wide call for proposals last month, more than 40 individual faculty and small teams outlined plans for innovation in online learning, and around half from the schools of Humanities and Sciences, Education, Medicine and Engineering will receive full or partial funding.

The proposals for the coming academic year cover a wide range of topics including gender in science, solar cells, head and neck anatomy, public health and organizational analysis. The faculty will use the grants not only to experiment with new models of teaching but also to conduct research to determine what works best for them.

"These exciting proposals from across the university show that many members of the faculty are interested in trying new teaching methods and using technology to improve their classes," said John Mitchell, the Mary and Gordon Crary Family Professor in the School of Engineering and President John Hennessy's special assistant for educational technology. "It's been a grassroots phenomenon, which really reflects Stanford's tradition of innovation and creativity."

Those leading the online education initiative on campus stress that the multiple proposals emanating from the faculty, and the varied technological solutions being put forward to accommodate them, show how broad and multifaceted online education can be.

"The level of interest from the faculty has been building steadily," Mitchell said. "There is nothing top-down about this. In line with Stanford's longtime experience in experimentation, there is something of a start-up mood all across campus. And many faculty members really want to get their message out to potential students around the world."

University leaders also emphasize that though enormous technological and social transformations may revolutionize the higher education model that has been in place for centuries, the quality of a Stanford education and Stanford's ultimate mission will remain unchanged. The point is to improve learning on campus and expand access to a Stanford education beyond the Farm, they say.

Clearly there is widespread interest among the faculty in developing either entirely new courses or supplementing existing courses with online content. Most of the seed-grant applicants aim for a blended experience; they want to experiment with flipped classrooms where lectures are delivered online by adding videos and cool tools but personal contact is retained and augmented by working on problems together. They are not necessarily interested, at least not yet, in the massive open online courses (MOOCs) that have garnered so much publicity.

"Stanford can leverage the social aspect of these courses," Mitchell said. "Students really know how to use social networking platforms to spread new ideas and think collectively, so bringing this dimension into learning, and combining it with face-to-face interaction, can generate a lot of excitement."

Mitchell also leads the Presidential Advisory Committee on Technology in Higher Education, a body convened in February to provide guidance to the university. In particular, it is examining policy issues, content production and content delivery. Its report will be issued later this summer.

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Stanford faculty is embracing online teaching opportunities

EL SEGUNDO, Calif., July 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --Vantage Media joined key industry authorities at the first White House Online Summit on Education held June 19. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan opened the summit with a briefing, speaking to a range of higher education topics from K-12 to post-secondary education. The summit also provided a forum to hear feedback and to discuss how to optimize collaboration with the White House and online media.

A leader in online education marketing, Vantage Media's participation reinforces Vantage Media's definitive industry expertise and heightens its ability to better utilize proprietary media and content to guide aspiring students to research and make informed decisions about their higher education goals.

"Higher education is in a state of constant change. The way students attend class, and the reasons they go to school, are far different today than they were just a few years ago," said Cappy Pratt, Vantage Media's Senior Director, Education, who participated in the summit. "The ability to dialogue with the policy makers who are shaping the direction of education is critical to ensuring long term value is created for students, schools and the greater public," said Pratt. "We were honored to be invited and look forward to continuing to contribute to this important topic."

About Vantage Media

Vantage Media delivers qualified customers to leading brands in the Insurance, Education, and Home verticals on a pay-for performance basis. Driven by, and accountable to client ROI, Vantage Media focuses on quality online media to find customers where and when they are buying. In 2011 Vantage Media merged with BrokersWeb (www.brokersweb.com), the No. 1 fastest growing company in the Insurance Industry on the Inc. 500. For more information, please visit http://www.vantagemedia.com.

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Vantage Media Participates in First White House Online Summit on Education

Coursera now offers roughly 100 free online courses from 16 colleges and universities.

Coursera, the online education service that offers courses from top-ranked universities such as Princeton University and Stanford University at no cost to the user, is adding to its list of schools and courses.

The education provider will be adding 12 universities and about 55 courses to bring its overall total to 16 schools offering approximately 100 free online classes.

[See other options for free online education programs.]

Among some of the new courses of note are more basic science offerings, which may attract students who fit the "younger educational bracket," notes Daphne Koller, a Coursera cofounder.

"The population that we've had previously on the platform has been a little bit more of the continuing education student, or [people] who already have a degree," Koller says. "A lot of our new courses are appealing also to people who are basically entering college students."

The 12 schools that will be joining Coursera, effective today, are Georgia Tech, Duke University, University of Washington, California Institute of Technology, Rice University, Johns Hopkins University, University of CaliforniaSan Francisco, University of IllinoisUrbana-Champaign, University of Virginia, Scotland's University of Edinburgh, University of Toronto, and Switzerland's cole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne(EPFL).

[Explore the best colleges and universities in the world.]

While Coursera has seen enrollments from 190 countries, the course offerings from Edinburgh, Toronto, and EPFL mark the first additions to the platform from international universities.

"Currently a lot of our content is in fact subtitled in different languages but this only takes you so far because students who really don't speak any English still struggle," Koller says. "To really reach the population that is the least educated in those countries to be able to offer content that is taught organically in a foreign language really expands our ability to teach the people who need it the most."

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More Universities Join Free Online Education Provider

The University of Wisconsin System was a bit late to the digital education party, but at least it's not a no-show.

While the UW is a relative latecomer to granting flexible online degrees, it already offers 4,600 online courses. It also has a huge advantage not possessed by most of its competitors a quality brand that can be marketed well beyond the state's borders.

UW System President Kevin Reilly and UW-Extension Chancellor Ray Cross were joined by Gov. Scott Walker last month in announcing the flexible degree program, which will be rolled out over the next year or so. Skeptics quickly asked if the program will undercut the UW's traditional campuses, how the tuition structure will work, whether quality can be upheld and how to guard against academic cyber-cheaters.

Legitimate questions, but here is why the flexible degree program will become an asset to the UW and the state:

It will create more degree-holders. Because the state has 13 four-year UW campuses and 21 private colleges and universities, one might think Wisconsin has an above-average share of adults with college degrees. Not so. Wisconsin ranks below the U.S. average of adults with four-year degrees, which has a direct effect on workforce diversity and income. At least 700,000 adults in Wisconsin have some college credits. If even one-third of them wrapped up a degree online, the percentage of adults with a degree would quickly climb to the U.S. average.

It's well-suited to older students. Few adults in their 30s and 40s want to be the Rodney Dangerfield character in Back to School, rubbing elbows with much younger students on campus. Jobs, kids and life get in the way. Signing up for online classes that produce a degree is another matter, however. It's a movie with a happy ending for returning students.

It could give promising high-school students a head start. Given that gifted and talented programs in Wisconsin schools are under-funded and under-appreciated, how about giving some of the state's college-bound kids a head start online? They could earn credits before they ever set foot on campus.

It will help businesses train workers faster for key jobs. The online program will initially focus on some of Wisconsin's largest skills gaps information technology, health care and business and management. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, those are three sectors with a growing demand for workers. Maybe the UW can even produce a few virtual welders, if that's what it takes.

It will help the UW confront its budget problems. The program is less about creating new courses than repackaging and reformatting current offerings. It will also tap into courses outside the UW itself, when needed. If it is modeled after successful programs such as Western Governors University, it will begin with public and private pledges and become self-sustaining over time. Students who take courses through WGU are eligible for state financial aid in their home states. Budgets are forcing colleges and universities into larger classes, anyway. Why not use online classes to teach well in larger settings?

It will become an export industry. Nearly 10 years ago, the Wisconsin Technology Council identified workforce education as a cluster poised for growth. In its report, Vision 2020: A Model Wisconsin Economy, the Tech Council urged making Wisconsin a center for workforce education and retraining, including content development, delivery and credentialing. One recommendation called for shared plans and strategies to increase the export of high-technology workforce education products to foreign markets and the import of foreign customers for high-technology workforce education services.

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UW's online degree plan has a promising niche

(PRWEB) July 16, 2012

FindOnlineEducation.com, an online education portal for students around the world seeking the latest in free and affordable online education course information, tools and in-depth research, today released its list of 16 People Changing the Landscape of Online Education Forever.

These visionaries are helping to disrupt - for the better - the online higher education model around the world. This allows millions of people to revolutionize and transform the way they see and access online material, and ultimately interact with the course. Right now, more than six million Americans are enrolled in online degree programs across the U.S., and their numbers are growing daily.

Anant Agarwal, President of edX, the not-for-profit joint venture between Harvard and M.I.T, recently described the potential of the online education model this way: For students around the world...this is the single biggest change in education since the printing press... and, ...Our (edX) goal is to educate a billion people around the world.

Read more about these 16 People Changing the Landscape of Online Education Forever and youll know why the revolution is on:

1. Sal Khan 2. Charles Thornburgh 3. Sebastian Thrun 4. Eren Bali 5. Gagan Biyani 6. Daphne Koller 7. Andrew Ng 8. John Hennessy 9. Walter Lewin 10. Richard DMillo 11. Clayton Christensen 12. George Siemens 13. Anant Agarwal 14. Jan Philipp Schmidt 15. Shai Reshef 16. Richard Braniuk

These outstanding leaders are driving the innovative efforts to bring online education to millions of people around the world at a low cost - sometimes even free of charge! Some experts believe that with the help of leaders like these, online education could eventually put substantial pressure on traditional, campus-based degree programs. This could lead to lower costs for everyone, and more of an emphasis on certificate-based job training, rather than traditional degrees.

To read detailed profiles of these great 16 innovators and what they are doing to change online education, please see the list at: FindOnlineEducation.com and see their latest Infographic titled, Infographic: The Online Education Revolution.

About FindOnlineEducation.com

FindOnlineEducation.com (FOE.com) is a portal for students around the world seeking the latest in free and affordable online education course information, tools and in-depth research. At FOE, you can learn about courses, schools, rankings, and read countless articles that focus on the latest topics of interest in online education. More at http://findonlineeducation.com/

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FindOnlineEducation.com Releases List of Top 16 People Changing Online Education Forever

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., July 12, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --Math 104: Calculus, a free online math course offered by Silicon Valley start-up Education-Portal.com, has drawn over 11,000 students since it launched in March 2012. The course is comprised of 103 bite-sized video lessons that are fewer than 10 minutes long. The video lessons make complex concepts like derivatives and integrals simple and easy to learn. Online learners self-navigate through the course, learning just the topics they need to know and skipping the ones they've already mastered.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120607/SF21048LOGO)

Students are praising the math course's "understandable and easy-to-remember analogies" and instructor Erin Lennon's relatable and clear teaching style. Dr. Alvin Bayliss, professor of applied mathematics at Northwestern University, says, "These lessons are most definitely a useful supplemental resource for calculus students as well as for students who want to study independently."

Math 104 is the second complete course in Education Portal Academy, which is currently building 11 other free courses in math, science, history, English, psychology, and business. Unlike sites such as Khan Academy, Udacity and Coursera, Education Portal Academy's courses and quizzes are designed to lead to real college credit by preparing students to test out of general education requirements. They are also 100% free - no login needed.

"Skyrocketing student debt is crushing today's college students," says Education-Portal.com CEO and co-founder Adrian Ridner. "Education Portal Academy's free college courses make education accessible to students all over the world."

Students have responded in droves. "I've been wanting to expand my college credits in order to get into a different field, but financially that is simply not possible," says one student. "Seeing your site...has given me a new glimmer of hope."

In addition to taking Education Portal Academy's free courses, students can apply for the site's several scholarships and college credit reimbursement program.

Education-Portal.com is a self-funded venture by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Ben Wilson and Adrian Ridner. Their mission for the last ten years has been to make education accessible through technology and innovation.

To learn more about Education Portal Academy's free courses, visit: http://education-portal.com/academy/index.html.

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Over 11,000 Students Take Free Online Calculus Course