Udacity is throwing in the towel on MOOCs with the company’s founder, Sebastian Thrun, declaring that they don’t work for higher education.

I described in a recent column in Educational Technology how the primary advantage of MOOCs is that they can bring educational opportunities to learners who have no other opportunities. Unfortunately, they fail to deal with individual needs for learning in ways possible with other means. Check out this article to learn more about Thrun’s reservations: What Will Happen to MOOCs Now that Udacity Is Leaving Higher Ed? — Campus Technology.

We are working with with the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) Specification in the ARCLITE Lab I direct at Brigham Young University (BYU). This article addresses the future of this specification from the IMS Global Learning Consortium: LTI Standard Promises a Kinder, Gentler LMS — Campus Technology.

For various reasons the flipped classroom is of particular interest to me. While accountability in any enterprise is one of the key elements of success. what students do outside of the classroom is one of the least accountable aspects of education today. Getting a handle on the impact of the flipped classroom could contribute to that particular gap in our knowledge of how students learn.

This research project seems to hold excellent promise in exploring the value of the flipped classroom: Assessing the Flipped Classroom’s Impact on Learning — Campus Technology.

This report on the flipped classroom at several institutions provides several interesting insights: How to Make the Most of the Flipped Classroom — Campus Technology.