I am very excited to be able to spend the day with colleagues from Colgate, Davidson, Hamilton, and Wellesley to see how best to collaborate on matters of common interest in the area of blended learning. I will write more about what we discussed today after the meeting is over, but if the discussions last night at dinner was any indication, we are in for a great day.

What brings the four of us together is that we are all small liberal arts colleges who are also members of edX. We also have grants from Mellon foundation to collaborate on “blended learning in the liberal arts” context. Whereas edX provides us a fantastic and solid platform to experiment with the MOOCs, the way teaching and learning happens in a small liberal arts college is very different from the large universities and therefore, through collaborations such as this, we can help edX understand our needs and support us better.

We have a session where students from all four colleges will help us understand their perspectives on matters related to MOOCs and blended learning. I find the student feedback essential for us to be able to strategize the future in this area.

I wrote earlier about the course that I am currently enrolled in – The Analytics Edge and the competition to develop a model to predict which blog posts in NY Times are likely to be popular. I am happy to inform that I placed reasonably well and received a very nice grade. As the toppers are discussing their strategies, I am thrilled to find out that my model was not that different than theirs! What gave them the edge was their patience and persistence in playing with the model to remove a few words that were “over contributing” to the model.

Off to the meeting…