Avatars In Education

A German fellow based in Hong Kong has taken an older idea and seems to be actually making it work for education.

A Meditation on the Library

www.lorinix.net/images/the_city/02.jpg/

How Come Great Courses Is Still In Business?

Here is a blog with 144 high quality no cost sources of first rate education.  OK, so how come Great Courses is still doing well?  They sell CDs and downloads of courses!

1. The courses are curated, that is knowledgeable people say the courses are good.

2. The delivery method is attractive, CDs, for in your car or elsewhere, or downloads otherwise.

3. They market through a catalog, still the best way to market courses of any sort.  You can browse through a paper catalog, or slog through 144 sites.

There is an opportunity here, to come up with a reader for all those online courses, and a website to curate them.  The thing is the reader.

City College San Francisco Woes

Reuters reports on the troubles CCSF is experiencing, and how it may shut down, California's largest community college.  The article talks about budget cutbacks and the commenters talk about illegal aliens and wasted money on overpaid instructors.

But there is a better story buried in the article:


The two-year college that serves 90,000 students risks becoming the first in California to lose its accreditation since 2006, triggering funding cuts that could shutter the school.


So the real problem is accreditation.


The Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges this week notified the 77-year-old City College that it must prove its worthiness to continue operating.


How is it the ACCJC is a judge of worthiness?


The commission is authorized to operate by the U.S. Department of Education and oversees institutions in the West. It evaluates community and junior colleges every six years.


So people in DC decide the standards for SF?


In a letter to the college's interim chancellor, Commission President Barbara Beno said an accreditation team in March found the school had failed to react to funding cuts and had reached "a financial breaking point."

So accrdeditation is not just about "quality" it is down to the school's books.

The commission cited a lack of administrators as one chief concern and also criticized the college for insufficient assessments of student learning and achievement.

How can a school have too few administrators?  Featherbedding admin has been a problem at schools since the beginning.  Weird.  Student assessments are easy, and done inside the classroom.  How is that a problem?

This year's evaluation of City College of San Francisco criticized it for having too few administrators. The evaluator's report describes the college's 39 administrators as "overtaxed" and insufficient in number to support the college's more than 1,800 faculty members.


OK.  what is the correct amount of administrators?  Time for schools to reject accreditation and go independent.