By now, this is old news. Last week, you all must have seen an announcement that Wellesley has joined edX
and that we plan to offer four courses through edX in what President Bottomly called a Grand Experiment. This decision came after an almost a yearlong internal conversations on what should be Wellesley’s strategy around the MOOCs and generally online education. I am so glad that we are entering into this partnership and that it is clearly an experiment. There are far too many questions than answers and as true academics, when we seek answers, we engage in experiments. There is simply no other way to find out than getting our hands and feet wet.
In general the extended Wellesley community seems excited about this decision. The student reporter who interviewed me on this topic was very excited and talked about how the newspaper, in an earlier editorial had supported Wellesley getting into this realm. She was also excited about the course she was enrolled in and her hands on experience. But, everyone also has a lot of interesting and important questions.
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After enjoying a fabulous Thanksgiving week, I fell sick. This is the usual flu like symptoms and cold and cough that I can’t seem to prevent twice a year. Except, this time it hit me hard. I rarely choose to stay home when I feel sick from cold and cough. After a long time, I had to do it. Now I am feeling much better, though I have a few more days of recovery left. On Monday, 11/26 and Tue, 11/27, some of us gathered in Bryn Mawr College for the Seven College Gathering. This used to be the seven sisters, which is now down to really six, of which one is a sibling (Vassar). This year, in addition to the usual groups that gather – the Presidents, Provosts and Deans of Students – they also invited the CIOs because of the importance and the future of Libraries and Technologies in small Liberal Arts Colleges.
It was a very nice gathering and the group of CIOs discussed various matters ranging from online learning to the Libraries as space, but most importantly, we agreed to collaborate on a couple of projects. One around digitization of materials in the archives for a Women in Education project and another around how best to support Digital Humanities in our campuses. The details of these will emerge later and I will be happy to share when we know more.
In case you have not heard, a UN sponsored conference begins in Dubai this week – World Conference on International Communication (WCIT) – organized by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The official language used here would lead one to think about this is yet another conference to talk about “international communication”, tariffs, taxes and the likes. It turns out that this is a conference where some select countries (the usual suspects like Russia and China) are pushing for international agreements on regulating internet traffic. As we all know, this has become the dominant vehicle for international communication. We all should pay attention to this and express our opinion on why any regulation is such a bad idea. You can do that at a Google Sponsored site – Take Action.
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and that we plan to offer four courses through edX in what President Bottomly called a Grand Experiment. This decision came after an almost a yearlong internal conversations on what should be Wellesley’s strategy around the MOOCs and generally online education. I am so glad that we are entering into this partnership and that it is clearly an experiment. There are far too many questions than answers and as true academics, when we seek answers, we engage in experiments. There is simply no other way to find out than getting our hands and feet wet.