Online Courses Fail at Community Colleges

More evidence for one of the most uniformly-verified findings I've seen in education: online courses strike out for community college students. From a paper by researchers at U.C.-Davis, presented at the American Educational Research Association's conference in April:

“In every subject, students are doing better face-to-face,” said Cassandra Hart, one of the paper’s authors. “Other studies have found the same thing. There’s a strong body of evidence building up that students are not doing quite as well in online courses, at least as the courses are being designed now in the community college sector.”

More at Alternet.org.

Teaching Evolution in Kentucky

A professor discusses teaching evolution in Kentucky. "Every time a student stomps out of my auditorium slamming the door on the way, I can’t help but question my abilities." (Link.)

(Thanks to Jonathan Scott Miller for the link.)

On Definitions

From the MathBabe blog by poster EllipticCurve, here:

Mathematical definitions mean nothing until you actually use them in anger, i.e. to solve a problem...

Quad Partners Buys Inside Higher Ed

From Education News in January:

Although there has been no public announcement made, Quad Partners, a New York private equity firm devoted to the for-profit college industry, recently gained a controlling stake in the education trade publication Inside Higher Ed (IHE).  The publication routinely reports on for-profit colleges and surrounding policy disputes, and the publication is now listed among investments on the Quad Partners website.

Read more here.