Ask the Delphic Oracle: TECHNOLOGY: San Jose State U. and Udacity Resume Online-Learning Trials

Note to recruiters

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Wednesday, January 15, 2014

TECHNOLOGY: San Jose State U. and Udacity Resume Online-Learning Trials

Via the Chronicle of Higher Education:

After putting its high-profile online-learning experiment on hold for the fall semester, San Jose State University said on Tuesday that it would resume offering three online courses next spring in conjunction with Udacity, one of the three big providers of massive open online courses.

The courses—”Elementary Statistics,” “Introduction to Programming,” and “General Psychology”—are among five with which the university has tested whether teaching methods and technology that Udacity developed for MOOCs could be useful in more-conventional courses offered for university credit. Two mathematics courses that were offered last spring are not being reprised.

The three courses will be offered for credit to strictly limited numbers of San Jose State students and others in the California State University system, the university said. The courses will also be offered to all comers through Udacity’s website, but completing the courses will earn those students only Udacity certificates.

Dude, where's my column?

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Anand Manikutty got his undergraduate degree in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, something for which he still gets ribbed. He has pursued graduate work at the University of Wisconsin, the Harvard Business School and Stanford University. He is a technology entrepreneur and inventor holding over 15 patents in computer science and technology. He has over 15 research papers in computer science and engineering. He has also contributed to a textbook on strategic management. He splits time between Monterey and the crazy, exciting San Francisco Bay Area. He is working on this column in collaboration with Prof. Krishnan Shankar. Krishnan Shankar (Ravi to friends) is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oklahoma. His professional trajectory started in Mumbai at Ruparel through Reed College in Portland, Oregon and the University of Maryland, College Park where he obtained his Ph.D under Karsten Grove in differential geometry. His latest creation is by far his best and most demanding: his daughter, Sophie Mallika, who renews his sense of the miraculous on a daily basis. Prof. Sankaran Manikutty was a Professor (with tenure) at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. His profession trajectory started in the Indian Railways where he worked for more than two decades. He obtained his Ph.D. in Strategy (an area that used to also be called Business Policy) at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. He joined as faculty at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and rose to the position of Professor. He is now retired from service. ~

What is "Ask the Delphic Oracle"?

"Ask the Delphic Oracle" is a blog created for a Science/Technology, Mathematics and Innovation column of the same name for the Times of India Group. (It is now a spin-off from the newspaper columns and, what's more, has survived the demise of the Indiatimes.com columns section itself. The themes of the blog are Science/Technology, Mathematics, Innovation and Economics with American Studies as a focus area.) The blog is maintained by Anuradha, Anand Manikutty in collaboration with Prof. Krishnan "Ravi" Shankar. All columnists and opinion writers have been taken off Indiatimes.com, and so we will no longer be running there. At the same time, this blog has taken a life of its own and besides, there are some loose ends to tie up, not the least of which is a summer puzzle contest we conducted in association with the Stanford Math Circle. So, posting on this blog will continue, and our association with the Stanford Math Circle will continue as well.

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