Now here's a bright idea...

From Inside Higher Ed today:

A powerful California lawmaker wants public college students who are shut out of popular courses to attend low-cost online alternatives – including those offered by for-profit companies – and he plans to encourage the state’s public institutions to grant credit for those classes. The proposal expected today from Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat and president pro tem of the state Senate, aims to create a “statewide system of faculty-approved, online college courses,” according to a written statement from Steinberg’s office. (A spokesman for Steinberg declined to discuss the bill.)

Faculty would decide which courses should make the cut for a pool of online offerings. Likely participants include Udacity and Coursera, two major massive open online course providers, sources said. Another option might be StraighterLine, a low-cost, self-paced online course company...

Full story at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/03/13/california-bill-encourage-mooc-credit-public-colleges

I bet you're wondering why you didn't think of that!

And the good news never ends...  Gov. Jerry Brown has shown an unusually keen interest in meetings of the University of California regents so far this year, stopping by to push his proposal for expanding online education. He'll be at it again today, dropping in to a meeting at the conference center on the University of California, San Francisco's Mission Bay campus...

Full story at http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/03/am-alert-california-gov-jerry-brown-visits-regents-again.html

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/03/am-alert-california-gov-jerry-brown-visits-regents-again.html#storylink=cpy

Nowhere to go on Sepulveda Boulevard

We might as well provide a pretty picture but the real news is:

Southbound Sepulveda Boulevard at Constitution Avenue will be reduced to one lane beginning Wednesday.  The closure will affect commuters between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. through Friday while traffic signal reconfiguration is completed at Constitution Avenue, according to a Metro construction notice...

Source: http://centurycity.patch.com/articles/sepulveda-closure-could-snarl-westside-traffic

Even if tempting, don't click on anything you find in the comments

Online fraudsters put spam-type "comments" on our blogsite regularly.  We delete them as we find them. Some explicitly claim to offer porn. Some just offer websites and invite you to click on them. Don't click on them!  You are more likely to get something harmful to your computer than anything else.

A typical comment of this type will have a message that may say something like "What a great post!"  But it generally won't have anything specifically relevant to the posting.  If you find such a comment that is more than a day old, we may have missed it when we looked for items to delete.  Let us know and we will delete them.

Harvard is Shocked and Appalled that Emails Aren't Private

We have noted that at public universities such as UC, emails you may consider private might be demanded as part of a public documents request.  At private universities, of course, those external rights of the public to see such material doesn't exist.  However, in this day and age, nothing online can be assumed to be private.  Recently, Harvard faculty and deans were shocked and appalled to find out that the powers-that-be in the administration were snooping in deans' emails to find a leak: 

From the Boston Globe: Harvard College issued a partial apology and a lengthy statement this morning offering its explanation to the search of resident deans’ e-mails as part of a leak investigation. In its statement, Harvard said the e-mail search was prompted by an investigation into a leaked e-mail and other information that described an Administrative Board case involving the university’s cheating scandal that became public last fall...

“I was shocked and dismayed,” said the law professor Charles J. Ogletree... “I hope that it means the faculty will now have something to say about the fact that these things like this can happen.” ...

Full story at
http://www.boston.com/yourcampus/news/harvard/2013/03/harvard_issues_apology_and_explanation_of_its_search_of_resident_deans_emails.html

ee more at: http://www.boston.com/yourcampus/news/harvard/2013/03/harvard_issues_apology_and_explanation_of_its_search_of_resident_deans_emails.html#sthash.t6Ah2k8O.dpuf

Windfall Revenue Remains

In January, the state controller reported a surprise windfall of about $4 billion arrived in personal income tax revenue.  It was unclear why but possibly it had to do with speculation by wealthy taxpayers about the fiscal cliff or prospective income tax changes at the federal level.  No one knows.  An interesting question was whether the windfall would unwind in February, i.e., come in below estimates.  It did unwind a bit.  But basically, there still is an unforeseen extra $4 billion in revenue so far this year. What the impact might be on the state budget for the coming year has yet to be seen.  The governor's budget proposal was developed before the extra money arrived. He probably would not favor treating what may be a one-shot windfall as an ongoing flow. However, the legislature might see the matter differently.

The latest cash statement (through February) from the controller is at:

http://www.sco.ca.gov/Files-EO/fy1213_feb.pdf

As the song says, it's hard to hold on to the wind as if it were permanent:

I guess the chemistry was good

UC-Irvine has put a chemistry course on the web.  But it doesn't give credit for it and isn't using the Coursera website (although UC-Irvine is affiliated with Coursera) because it wants to give the course away free.  As for labs, it says that if some other institution wants to offer the course, it will have to provide the labs, etc.  We are likely to see a bunch of such offerings from the campus. They show the campus is up-to-date, complying with the Regents/governor desires, and yet - in the end - they commit to nothing.  Actually, yours truly has put several lectures of his own on the web.  If anyone wants to see them, just let me know and I will supply the links. I am awaiting full praise from the Regents.governor but so far it hasn't happened.

You can find the UC-Irvine announcement at:
http://learn.uci.edu/openedweek/opchem.html

An Inside Higher Ed article about the Irvine course is at:
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/03/11/irvine-offers-full-chemistry-curriculum-online-and-free

Actually, good chemistry has already been available for some time:

More in our coverage of teaching innovations

Given the hunger at the Regents and with the governor for teaching innovations - notably online education - we have in past postings noted college courses on TV in the 1950s and on radio in the 1920s.

Online ed is supposed to allow students to work at their own pace.  So may we present to you now, the Skinner teaching machine: