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Udemy: How to: Convert new students with Course Announcements (scripts included!)
When you have a course on Udemy, you have the capability to send all enrolled students emails related to your course. We affectionately call these Course Announcements. Did you know Course Announcements have an open rate of 20%? That’s right—1 in 5 people who receive a Course Announcement from you, open it. That’s pretty good! Yet, only a small percentage of instructors ever send out a Course Announcement. Here are two things you can do today to drive course sales with... Continue reading »…
Udemy: Design Your Course for Completion
There are two basic ways to construct your online course. One option is to create all of the fundamentals of a topic, and present the material in an organized and logical way. This provides a strong fundamental understanding of the material, as well as a long-term reference guide for that material. The second approach is to create a task-based course. This sets up a common goal for all subscribers, and each part of the course builds on that premise until... Continue reading »…
Udemy: Creating a Case Study Course
Resources for Creating a Case Study Course on Udemy This is a list of resources that I used to create my logo design course on Udemy that I talk about in the video. It also includes some alternatives that you can try out. Mind Mapping Software Mindmeister (Online and Mobile Devices): Mindmeister is the software I use to do my mindmapping. It is a paid service, but if you look at the pricing page at the bottom there is a... Continue reading »…
Coursera: The birth of a MOOC: An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python
Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Professors Scott Rixner and Joe Warren from Rice University. Their class, “An Introduction to Interactive Programing in Python”, started yesterday, October 15th. Yesterday, October 15th, Rice University launched its first open course on Coursera, “An Introduction to Interactive Programing in Python”. We are still wondering exactly what we got ourselves into… But, let’s start at the beginning. Together, we have been teaching at Rice for almost 4 decades, and we are both interested and involved in introductory computer science education. This past June, Rice University decided to join Coursera. We immediately saw the opportunity to both improve our teaching and reach more students at the same time! Neither one of us was smart enough to pass up this opportunity. So, here we are on perhaps what has become the ride of our lives (in terms of teaching). Joe has been teaching an introductory game cours…
Udemy: Changing the Way We Create and Manage Courses
Over the past year, we’ve seen truly tremendous growth in our catalog of online courses & our community of expert instructors. Over 4,500 courses have now been published on Udemy (up from 2,000 one year ago) by an amazing range of experts, in topics like: business, programming, entrepreneurship, photography, self-help, design, yoga, and more. With so many new courses being published every month, we knew that we needed to invest even more energy in supporting our instructors and helping them... Continue reading »…
Udemy: How to: Promote your Udemy course on Facebook with just $7
Have $7? That’s all you need to promote your next Udemy course on Facebook. Facebook recently released the ability for anyone with less than 5,000 friends and subscribers to promote their Facebook status updates on their personal profile pages. That means whenever you update your status on your personal profile page, you now have the option to pay $7 to have your update appear towards the top of your friends’ newsfeeds. Once you post your Facebook status update, you will... Continue reading »…
Udacity: Malala Yousafzai, Our Thoughts are with You!
Malala Yousafzai lives in Pakistan. In 2009, the Taliban regime in her region banned girls from attending school. As an eleven year old, she wrote a blog (under a pseudonym for fear of being attacked) about her life and her thoughts on education. On Tuesday, a gunman shot Malala in the head. She is currently in the hospital in critical condition.Malala’s commitment to educational equality runs so deep that she was willing to risk her life to expose the injustices she lived with. If you’d like to help Malala’s cause, please consider donating to Global Giving’s project to educate 1000 Pakistani girls.Our thoughts are with Malala and all of our Pakistani students. Thanks to Khadijah for posting about this in the physics forum. You are a true hero, Malala. We hope you get well soon.
Coursera: Gamification Wednesdays: pizza, laptops, and learning
Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Naysawn Naderi, founder of Art Sumo and a student in Kevin Werbach’s recently finished Gamification course. He also blogs once a week on entrepreneurship on his personal blog. Naysawn took Gamification with five friends in Seattle, Washington. He stopped by the Coursera office recently, and we asked him to share with you why he decided to create a study group and what he learned from the study group experience. I’ve always been a big believer in the need for continuous education, having been self-taught in programming, foreign languages, and UX design. While I certainly have the motivation to learn new things, I find it particularly challenging to maintain the discipline and dedication in an online course. To combat this trend, I invited a few friends over to watch the Gamification lectures on a weekly basis with me. I thought it would make the lectures more fun, as well as give us a heightened social commitment to finish the c…
Khan Academy: How your heart beats
Medical Fellow Rishi Desai explains “heart depolariztion,” the flow of positive charge through the heart that happens every time your heart beats! Membrane Potentials - Part 1 Membrane Potentials - Part 2 Permeability and Membrane Potentials Action Potentials in Pacemaker Cells Action Potentials in Cardiac Myocytes Electrical System of the Heart Depolarization Waves Flowing through the Heart…
OLI. Carnegie Mellon University: October Webinar Dates
Our next set of webinars in October have now been scheduled. Visit Webinars on Using OLI for the full schedule. You can bookmark that page for the most current listing of upcoming webinars. We look forward to seeing you there ……
Khan Academy: Introducing... Bit-zee the 'Bot!
Khan Academy Fellow Karl Wendt has created a cute little robot, Bit-zee, out of everyday items — a hair dryer, tap light, alarm clock, digital camera, and a universal remote. See what these kids thought: Bit zee and get a tour of some of Bit-zee’s key parts: Bit-zee Bot Introduction…
Udacity: Work it Harder, Make it Better
Great teaching takes effort. It takes time. In traditional schools, the amazing teachers are the ones who continuously strive to improve their teaching. A class taught by such a teacher will not be the same this year as it was last year.The opportunity for improvement is even more apparent in the world of online education. In this world, we don’t have to wait a year to make improvements and we don’t have to reteach an entire class. Instead we can take out a piece of a class that didn’t work so well, figure out why it fell short, and then replace it with something better. We can bridge the gaps in our content with additional material. We can supplement confusing topics with additional examples. So in addition to working on a collection of new classes, we are also focusing on improving what we already have. We’ve already made significant changes to ST101: Intro to Statistics and CS101: Intro to Computer Programming. We’ve recently added some new material to…
Coursera: Our first internal hackathon at Coursera
Last week, we held our first internal hackathon at Coursera. What’s a “hackathon”? Well, it can take many forms, but it’s basically when a bunch of software engineers get together and hack on a particular project during a condensed period of time. Of course, we software engineers are always hacking on something, but we’re usually working on incremental updates to existing features or bug fixes, whatever is the highest priority project at the moment. During a hackathon, we get the opportunity to put all our main projects on the backburner for a few days, and work on something completely new and different. It’s a chance to try out ideas we’ve had milling at the back of our heads, to learn new technologies, and to work with colleagues outside our usual team. So, on Thursday at noon, we kickstarted our first hackathon with a round of pitches. We gave everyone exactly one minute to explain what they wanted to work on and why other people should j…
Khan Academy: Sal's new book, "The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined"
Sal’s new book, “The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined,” is now available. Read about Sal’s radical vision for the future of education, as well as his own remarkable story.
Khan Academy: New art videos
Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris (and guest instructors Dr. Heather Horton, Dr. Mark Trowbridge, and Sal Khan) have new videos on art ancient, Renaissance, and modern. Before 400 C.E. - Ancient Cultures Ara Pacis Ancient Greek Temples at Paestum, Italy Pair of Centaurs Fighting Cats of Prey from Hadrian’s Villa Exekias, Attic black figure amphora with Ajax and Achilles playing a game 1500-1600 End of the Renaissance and the Reformation Giorgione’s The Adoration of the Shepherds After 1960: The Age of Post-Colonialism Institutional Critique: Hans Haacke’s Seurat’s ‘Les Poseuses’ (small version)…
Khan Academy: Ping Pong Ball Launcher
Doctoral Fellow Karl Wendt has built a cool ping-pong ball launcher and shows you how to build one, too. You can find the whole project at: http://www.khanacademy.org/science/projects Ping Pong Ball Launcher Introduction Build a ping pong ball launcher Update and modify your ping pong ball launcher…
Khan Academy: Commenting on discussion posts
Developer Marcia Lee and designer Kitt Hirasaki have added the ability to “comment” on people’s questions, answers, and feedback on our videos and computer science programs. On an question, you can add a comment to help the person clarify their question. On an answer or feedback post, you can thank them or keep the conversation going. And you’ll be notified when they reply back to you. We’re looking forward to seeing our community members connect with each other even more. Go forth and discuss!
Udacity: What Can MOOCs Teach Us About Learning? | HASTAC
Cathy Davidson blogs thoughtfully about MOOCs. Sebastian is quoted in the post. We agree it's time to look beyond the MOOC hype and understand how we can really impact learning and both educational and career advancement. The Udacity experiment to push "Learn, Think, Do" continues...What Can MOOCs Teach Us About Learning? | HASTACWhat are your thoughts?
Khan Academy: Computer Science "Prime Adventures" -- level up!
Khan Academy instructor Brit Cruise has added two new videos and interactive computer science programs to his lesson on computational number theory. Using our CS framework, you’ll build a machine that determines whether a number is prime or not… Level 2: What is a computer? — Time/Space complexity Level 3: Algorithmic efficiency — Challenge If you missed the introduction, be sure to check it out first! Level 1: Primality Test…
Khan Academy: New medical laboratory videos
Dr. Rishi Desai, our medical fellow, has made a whole host of new videos about laboratory values and the concepts of molarity, molality, osmolarity, osmolality, and tonicity. You can even learn how to calculate your own osmolarity! Lab Values and Concentrations Introduction to lab values and normal ranges Units for common medical lab values What is an equivalent? Molarity vs. Molality Molarity vs. Osmolarity Calculate your own osmolarity Molarity, Molality, Osmolarity, Osmolality, and Tonicity - What’s the difference? Tonicity - comparing 2 solutions Blood Pressure Control Aldosterone and ADH: find out how they cause changes in volume and osmolarity…