2tor, Inc.

USC’s Online Teaching Master’s Called Cybereducation Milestone

When a school such as the University of Southern California delivers an online master’s degree in teaching, some observers say the message is this: Cyberspace education has arrived.
USC’s Rossier School of Education is billing the degree as the first of its kind offered by a “major research university.”
“The thing that impresses me is that you have a major elite university like USC, with a certain branding, deciding to aggressively pursue a fully online program at the master’s level,” said academic and author Alfred Rovai.
USC’s program, on track to begin classes in June, is an online version of the Los Angeles university’s established K-12 teacher education curriculum.
Students can obtain a teaching credential along with their master’s.
Taught by full-time professors, the program includes interactive lectures, streaming video, chat rooms and online conferences with instructors.

Digital Cameras Provided
USC will provide students with digital cameras to record themselves when they do the required student teaching. Their professors and peers will view the videos, then critique and discuss them. Students will have mentors from their local community to assist them online and in person throughout the program.
That includes their transition from doing course work to practicing teaching in real K-12 classrooms. While USC bills its teaching master’s as the first of its kind, many colleges, universities and for-profit businesses offer online education nowadays.
“The trend is clear. There continues to be an explosion in this area,” said Rovai, a professor at Regent University, a Virginia Beach, Va., Christian university that offers online and on-campus programs. Karen Symms Gallagher, Rossier’s dean, agrees. “For professional degrees at the master’s level, this is the future,” she said.
Working professionals, career-changers or stay-at-home parents who want to become teachers but can’t physically make it to the USC campus can get an education equivalent to their counterparts’ studying in classrooms, Gallagher says.

Could Boost Revenue
The online program will cost the same as USC’s on-campus program. For this school year, the university’s on-campus Master of Arts in Teaching students paid $1,249 per unit. Students who want multiple subject credentials, and most do, take 30 units, a tab that comes to $37,470. The 2009-10 tuition hasn’t been set yet.
By offering full online degree programs, schools can boost revenue.
“There are a lot of factors that are fueling (the trend in online degree programs), not the least of which is the need for universities to get more students and improve the financial bottom line,” Rovai said. In the past, university graduate programs might have competed with other institutions in their geographic area. Now, any university that offers an equivalent online program is a rival, says Rovai, author of “Distance Learning in Higher Education.”
To take the cyberspace step, USC is partnering with 2tor, a New York City-based educational services company founded in 2008.
The company’s first revenue-sharing agreement is with USC, founder and CEO John Katzman says. He is also the founder of Princeton Review, (REVU) a big provider of test preparation and college guidance materials.
“Our feeling was that the world was ready for a high-end, high-quality, branded degree program online,” Katzman said.
Besides providing technology and logistical support, 2tor will help recruit students, he says.

Different Type Of Learning
Online education differs from on-campus education in many ways, including how students learn and teachers teach, says James Rowley, an education professor and executive director of the Institute for Technology-Enhanced Learning at the University of Dayton. The Catholic institution is Ohio’s largest private university.
“The real challenge for professors is they have to change the way they work,” Rowley said. “So many professors historically have relied on personal interaction with students.”
Online, teachers have to think differently about how they get ideas across, he says.
“A lot of emphasis now is on course design that hopefully puts students at the center of the process,” Rowley said.
Sometimes students resist online learning, saying they prefer face-to-face contact with teachers and interaction with other students.
They also doubt their tech skills, particularly if they’re new to online learning, Rowley says.
“But if the course is well designed,” he said, “a lot of those fears go away.”

Class Sizes and Discontent Rise in NY

The New York Times reported yesterday that class sizes, across the board, have risen in New York City schools.
Large class sizes point to a decrease in the hiring of teachers, the cause of which has become a current topic of acerbic contention.
For city officials, the culprit comes in the form of a weak economy and subsequent budget cuts. But many are unconvinced, noting the Bloomberg-Klein system’s neglect for class-size reduction funds. Council Robert Jackson, Chairman of the city’s Education Committee, had this to say:

Class-size reduction money has been in place for a long time, and they have done nothing with it… They get an F. They don’t even get an A for trying, because getting an A for trying would mean all of what they had been doing would be geared toward getting the size down, which it has not.

It looks like Mayor Bloomberg has a fight on his hands. And likely, it’s one he’d rather not fight before election season has even begun.

University of Southern California Masters of Arts in Teaching Delivered Online (MAT@USC) Information Session in New York City

For all aspiring and current teachers in the New York City Area:
Tuesday February 24, 2009 at 6:30pm
Marriott Downtown
85 West Street (map) New York, New York

  The MAT@USC is a new and innovative Master of Arts in Teaching program delivered online from the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education. Designed for aspiring and current teachers, the program combines interactive online learning with carefully selected field-based experiences in your local area, to provide you with the knowledge, skills, and experience needed to make a difference in the classroom.
  Join us on February 24th for a free MAT@USC program information session. The session will feature MAT@USC faculty and staff and will take an in-depth look at the curriculum, technology platform, student services and financial aid opportunities, and much more. Representatives will be on hand to answer any questions you may have about the program and the University.
  Space is limited, so reserve your spot today! Please RSVP here.

Where did the juice go?

Over the past few months, Alex and I have had quite a few words to say about Juicy Campus. And though we doubted there would be much more to say on the subject, we never would have thought for a second that a eulogy would be in order.
Call the slanderers, the slandered, a priest and an undertaker; Juicy Campus is dead.
Well kinda.
When Matt Ivester, the (I suppose former) CEO of Juicycampus, announced that Juicy Campus could not weather the current economic storm and would be shutting down, collegeacb.com found itself in a unique and opportunistic position. The big fish in the sea of anonymous online soap boxes is gone and a smaller but potentially as threatening one has taken its place. Collegeacb.com is claiming to be a thought-provoking, cathartic mechanism for college students with something to say. The new site even rebukes the nasty spirit of its predecessor. But when I attempted to reach juicycampus.com, this afternoon, I was immediately redirected to Collegeacb.com.
The new site is straddling a pretty thin line, simultaneously cautious of the juice, but thirsty for the same market. It’s too early to tell what is in store for the new king of college gossip, but if I had to venture a guess, I’d say this is just a diet version of a dead product, a little healthier but mostly, just more of the same.

The web’s first comprehensive, interactive portal for teacher certification

CertificationMap.com, sponsored by MAT@USC, is a simple, yet effective way to determine the requirements needed to become a teacher in your state.

USC Now Accepting Applications For The New MAT@USC, A Master of Arts in Teaching Delivered Online

Learn more at the USC website: http://rossier.usc.edu/mat

Arne Duncan Tapped for Education Post

Yesterday, President-elect Obama announced that Arne Duncan will be Education Secretary in the new cabinet.    Duncan, who has run the Chicago public school system since 2001, has defined himself as a leader particularly unswayed by orthodoxy. Between his support for a “gay-friendly” school and knack for performance-based incentives for both teachers and students, Duncan has drawn national attention for his revitalization of Chicago’s schools.

Weingarten in the Running for NY Senate Seat

NY1 is reporting that Randi Weingarten, the President of AFT/UFT has entered the running for New York’s open Senate seat.
Eduwonk weighs in on the issue:

…there are other people who can be a good senator from New York but looking around the teachers’ union scene you don’t see a lot of national leaders with the potential to be transformative and move things along past today’s debates.  There are some promising up and comers but if Weingarten leaves now it will leave a vacuum.   She’s already doing two jobs, adding a third is probably untenable even for her.

TSU’s Juiced Out Ban

Tennessee State University just got a little less juicy.  University Vice President for Student Affairs, Michael Freeman, has banned Juicycampus.com from the campus network and ignited a rather passionate debate over first amendment rights and its limitations in cyberspace.   Fellow blogger, Alex Bargmann, condemned Juicy Campus some time ago as the “Vulture of Higher Education.” For the most part, I agree with Alex—Juicy Campus represents the ugliest and perhaps the most despicable application of Web 2.0. But does ugliness necessitate and justify censorship at a public, state-funded academic institution?   CEO and President of Juicy Campus, Matt Ivester, argues that it doesn’t. In an open letter, Ivester makes a persuasive case against TSU’s ban:  

In a truly Orwellian manner, the University chose to limit students’ abilities to read and write to an un-moderated message board online, because their speech was reflecting “negatively” on TSU. Freeman’s position would seem to be that his students cannot be trusted with their First Amendment rights, perhaps believing that they are too immature or irresponsible. Perhaps though, they are just under-educated on this issue. But, unlike his colleagues at top universities, Mr. Freeman has abdicated his responsibility for educating those students, and in doing so has disgraced both his University and his State. Because TSU’s decision seems to violate its students’ First Amendment rights, there is some question as to how long their ban will remain in effect. Students and free speech advocacy groups are already discussing legal action. JuicyCampus believes that the answer to bad speech is good speech, not censorship. To that end, JuicyCampus encourages students who disagree with certain comments to reply to those comments with additional information and/or their own opinions. Everyone has an equal voice on JuicyCampus.”

  This debate might be court-bound as “Students and free speech advocacy groups are already discussing legal action” and may also present itself as one of those unfortunate circumstances, where what is right is not necessarily what is legal.  Juicy Campus is vile and much of what is written across its filthy message boards may very well be considered slander per se in our law courts.  Further, Juicy Campus may potentially suffer the resultant legal ramifications as a proxy for the anonymous slanderer. But however offensive Juicy Campus might be, it is hardly the only offensive site out there, and the imagination needs little stretching to discover that it is far from the worst.   In an ideal world, students wouldn’t say terrible things about their peers or even desire to do so.  But the world isn’t ideal and evils like Juicy Campus do exist. Our constitution and the rights provided are meant to accept some evils as the price for our liberties. I cannot put it any better than the French philosopher Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.” Perhaps, TSU would be wise to think a little bit more about Voltaire and a little bit less about Ivester these days.   Juicy Campus may pose a serious threat to TSU’s students, but as of yet, that threat is not a legal one.  Banning it from the campus is not the answer. Rather, challenging Ivester in court when the circumstances warrant it is a far better way to defend decency in the sometimes dangerous world of web 2.0.   Leave a comment and tell us what you think.

Knights of Education Roundtable Discussion on NCLB

Head over to NewTalk.org for their roundtable discussion led by Jay Greene on how No Child Left Behind should be handled.  The ball has been rolling for over a day on how to handle NCLB’s failures and whether or not we should “mend it, not end it” or replace it entirely.
The experts also begin discussing the philosophies and methods behind federal accountability in the education sector.  Definitely worth checking out, especially if you want a refreshing break from those “Dear President Elect”  or the “Why ___________ will be Secretary of Education” blogposts.
Start here for the most recent posts from the discussion.