Speaking of MOOCs

It's one of the best parts of my job: I get to dig deep on fashionable topics. For a curious person like me, it's like being in heaven.

I've been wanting to find out more about MOOCs and what the buzz was about. The opportunity to learn more came when Sebastian Thrun, founder of a Massively Open Online Course company, spoke about launching his company Udacity.com during the President Speaker series at CSUMB on Wednesday. I wrote a story about the event, but naturally, you can't even begin to touch the surface of MOOCs on a 20-inch story.

So if you're curious, here's more. Enjoy!

For a good primer on what MOOCs are, click here.

Five education providers offering MOOCs

The Year of the MOOC -- New York Times

Beware of the high cost of online course (New York Times)

How the embrace of MOOC's could hurt Middle America here (subscription only)

Sebastian Thrun, creator U

Sebastian Thrun, former Stanford professor and creator of Udacity, an online learning channel, will make a presentation at CSUMB as part of the president's speaker series.

Thrun will talk about the very latest on how Udacity and MOOCs have taken education by storm. His first Massive Open Online Course or MOOC enrolled over 160,000 students.

For more information and to RSVP, click here.

Candance Thille talks about "Disruptive Innovation" at CSUMB

The CSUMB's President's Speaker Series kicked off last week with a talk by Candace Thille, director of the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) at Carnegie Mellon University.

Thille's specializes in applying results from research about learning to the design of open web-based learning or MOOCs (massive open online courses) which  are all the rage right now. Most major, prestigious universities have added these type of courses (Harvard, Yale, Stanford) to their curriculum, something's that's really turning higher education upside down.

CSUMB's President Eduardo Ochoa is enthusiastic about the possibilities of revamping education using new technology tools.

 If you want to see Thille's talk, click here.