Pearson’s Connections Academy Launches New College and Career Prep Initiative

HOBOKEN –  Pearson, the world’s leading learning company, announced today that Connections Academy, its K-12 online school program will expand its slate of college and career readiness initiatives for middle and high school students. The initiatives feature partnerships with Coursera, the global online learning platform, Acadeum, the largest course sharing network in higher education, e-Dynamic Learning, a provider of Career Technical Education for middle and high school students, and Credly, a global leader in digital credentialing.

The career readiness initiatives for high school students will offer an innovative new tri-credit approach where courses can deliver:

  • High school credit from Connections Academy
  • Industry-recognized micro-credentials on Coursera, and
  • Eligibility for college credit toward over 150 bachelor’s degree programs in the U.S. via the Coursera/Acadeum college and university partner network

The industry credentials available can help qualify high school students for careers in fields like data analytics, UX design, software development, and cybersecurity, while also allowing them to earn eligible credit and cost savings toward a college degree.…Read More

Minnesota eases restrictions on online education following internet dust-up

Hey, all you colleges and universities not in Minnesota: Want to offer a free, online, not-for-credit course to people living here, no questions asked? This is your lucky day, TwinCities.com reports. The state has stopped enforcing a 20-year-old statute requiring such institutions to go through a lengthy registration process before they could offer no-cost internet coursework. The move on Friday, Oct. 19, was prompted by an online article involving Coursera, a Silicon Valley startup that works with dozens of colleges and universities to offer some of their courses online for free. The bulk of those schools aren’t registered with Minnesota’s Office of Higher Education as current law requires, and months ago the state office informed Coursera. So Coursera amended its terms of service to reflect this, though it disagreed with Minnesota’s position and considered the requirement onerous and “unfortunate.”

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Top campuses jump into the free online course game

Two universities gave millions to Coursera this week.

A dozen of the country’s top universities will make courses available for free on the open online class site Coursera by the beginning of 2013. The announcement was made on that same day that investors — including two campuses — invested millions in the web-based learning site.

By January, Coursera officials expect the site to offer 100 free courses in the arts, computer sciences, health, mathematics, history, literature, and other disciplines. All courses will be free for any individual with a computer and internet connection to enroll.…Read More

Experts: UVa.’s Coursera partnership far from an embrace of online learning

More than 680,000 students have taken a Coursera class.

The University of Virginia will make four of its courses available for free online in 2013 after the campus’s governing board last month cited a lack of web-based courses in its controversial ouster of President Teresa Sullivan.

But advocates for online education said the university’s partnership with for-profit internet learning site Coursersa—which announced partnerships with 12 universities July 17—should be seen as a tepid embrace of nontraditional courses, not as a momentous shift toward a new learning model.…Read More