Extension Engine
Blog

In a previous post, I outline what it takes for an organization to move beyond the filmed movie stage of online learning to the point at which it is creating distinctive online learning experiences. To quote from that article: An online university class should not be the educational equivalent of a filmed play. It should deeply integrate new technologies for …

One of the things we think a lot about at ExtensionEngine is creating new and improved mechanisms for authentic assessments in online learning. Traditionally, online learning hasn’t done authentic assessment well due to limited faculty time, costs, and the limitations of machine grading. We are proposing a Microsoft Office Mix xBlock for Open edX (and eventually edX itself) that would address these limitations and, thus, increase the ease of deploying such assessments.

Evolution of film making vis a vis online learning

Many early movies were simply filmed plays. Early producers simply applied a new technology to an existing cultural construct. The excitement, lasting for a short period of time, was the simple act of watching a play …

When I was a professor (not all that long ago), designing a class was not much more complicated than “figure out what you want to teach, and then talk about that and give an exam.” Moving a course online within an online or hybrid program requires, shall we say, a bit more insight and planning. To give youan idea of the kind of planning we think is necessary, our team put together the following 10 best practices for online learning program development.

By now we have all heard of edX—one of the major organizations who make MOOCs available to anyone who wants to take them. Courses on edX run on a codebase that is highly related to that of its two other platforms, one called edX Edge and the other—an open source version of the codebase—called Open edX.