SmartPlanet: 4% Completion Rate for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC)

04 Education, Academia, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Gift Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

smartplanet logoOnly four percent complete massive open online courses: setback or growing pains?

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have relatively few active users, and  user engagement falls off dramatically, especially after the first one to two weeks weeks of a course. Ultimately, only a handful of users persist to the course end.

That's the gist of a recent study from a University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education (Penn GSE) study. The study's authors, Laura Perna and Alan Ruby, analyzed the movement of a million users through sixteen Coursera courses offered by the University of Pennsylvania from June 2012 to June 2013.

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Berto Jongman: Bits, Bytes, & Stuff

Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Peace Intelligence
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

African State Fragility Long-Term

Al Qaeda Inside Syria

Bitcoin Bungling – Digital Flames Eat Investment

Bitcoin Hits $1000

Chernobyl Update

Conference Results: Geopolitics of the Arctic

Crowdsourcing Dreams Around the World

Cyber Threats to Business: The Top Ten

DEFCON 16 Presentations

Engaging the Muslim World with Public Diplomacy

Japanese Banking Scandal: Lending to Yakuza

Political Islam Making a Comeback

David Swanson: Peace in the Pentagon?

Peace Intelligence
David Swanson
David Swanson

Peace in the Pentagon

I'm a huge fan of peace studies as an academic discipline that should be spread into every corner of what we call, with sometimes unclear justification, our education system.  But often peace studies, like other disciplines, manages to study only those far from home, and to study them with a certain bias.

I recently read a book promoting the sophisticated skills of trained negotiators and suggesting that if such people, conversant in the ways of emotional understanding, would take over the Palestine “peace process” from the aging politicians, then … well, basically, then Palestinians would agree to surrender their land and rights without so much fuss.  Great truths about negotiation skills only go so far if the goal of the negotiation is injustice based on misunderstanding of the facts on the ground.

Continue reading “David Swanson: Peace in the Pentagon?”

Berto Jongman: Bits, Bytes, & Stuff

Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

CIA FOLLIES: FBI Levinson in Iran Tasked by Analysts (We Do Not Make This Stuff Up) – 3 Veteran Analysts Fired, Others Disciplines (AP)

Phi Beta Iota: One more reason why exploitation of all 15 slices of HUMINT need to be governed and managed as one.

CULTURE: Brzezinski on Ukraine's Irreversible Events

CULTURE: Japanese-Korean Spies & Future

CULTURE: National Security and Local Police (PDF 86 Pages, Brennan Center for Justice)

CYBER: 62% of Web Taffic is Not Human (The Atlantic)

CYBER: Electormagnetic Pulse “Black Swan” Coming Soon? (High Frontier)

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Bits, Bytes, & Stuff”

Berto Jongman: Bits, Bytes, & Stuff

Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Peace Intelligence
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

12 Cyber-Scams Popular Now

2013 Top Economic Stories in 42 Graphics

9 Google Chrome Extensions

California Solitary Cells – Torture? (BBC)

Contractors Who Worked in Conflict Zones Suffer High Rates of PTSD, Depression and Get Little Help (RAND)

Death of global web: Internet will end in 2014 – Kaspersky Lab

Dementia – Five Priorities (BBC)

EU Bank Rescue Plan – Why? (BBC)

Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

Hacking The Zero-Day Vulnerability Market (DarkReading)

New H7N9 bird flu resists drugs without losing ability to spread (Reuters)

Non-VIolent Climate Insurgency (Foreign Policy in Focus)

NSA Damned by Nobel Prize-Winning Authors (Huffington Post)

Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

Nuclear Madness – Russia Warns Over US Global Strike Program

Over-Policing America (Le Monde Diplomatique)

Russian Financial Crime – The Magnitsky List Grows (BBC)

Ukraine Crime Family Boss as President? (BBC)

Whither al Qaeda: A ‘Tri-alogue' with Brian Michael Jenkins, Seth Jones, and Andrew Liepman (RAND)

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