Mobile technologies are creating new ways for students to connect with their course materials, their classes and their colleagues, while also providing new ways to save money, while increasing access, productivity and flexibility.

Unlike a scientific experiment that can keep controls and treated samples isolated in separate test tubes, the MOOC experiment is playing out in one of the messier corners of the already messy real world: academia.

The college experience can't be fully be realized if the only way students meet is through a screen, or rushing to get credentialed to be a better worker. College is more than learning a trade; it's also about learning to be a better person.

Many adult learners enrolling online for the first time may be somewhat apprehensive about online education. After all, their only experience of learning has been in traditional, face-to-face settings. Other adult learners expect it to be fun, fast, and friendly.

To watch the TV ads, one might think that earning a post-secondary degree online is easier than traditional classroom study. Certainly, it is true that one might do a lot of work in one's pajamas. But these enticements do not capture the full picture of what online students encounter.

There is no reward for taking a MOOC beyond the learning you achieve. Which means that arranging your time to not learn everything you can from them would be the most ridiculous time waster of all.

If we really want to be more accessible, more affordable and more efficient at delivering basic college education to more students, we need to ask how we can collaborate, where we can work together, and determine what we can do that is so unique to our university that it becomes our basic mission.

Those of us in the higher education online marketplace have seen the "for-profits" a bit similarly, as though they had created so much momentum that there was simply no way to stop their progress. Then 2012 came.

While a bulk of their classes would probably be considered technical training or self-help in nature, they do include some interesting humanities and social sciences items in their library.

Paying thousands of dollars a semester to cram into a crowded lecture hall with a thousand other to receive the distilled knowledge of a tenured professor doesn't make much sense when the same lectures can be accessed online.

We seem to be at a crossroads, where costs cannot align with the public's ability and willingness to pay. Something has to give.

The bull sessions and hallway discussions of the physical college environment are replaced by online forums, social networks and video conferencing in the MOOC environment. And like reading, discussion largely boils down to a numbers game.

Through MOOCs, colleges and universities can expose young students to a wide range of curriculum and topics that aren't readily available at most secondary schools.

The MOOCs are pushing everyone to sharpen their game, and the debate is on whether this is a good thing for education. I'll pass on that one, but would like to throw out some suggestions for using MOOCs to improve our misguided college admissions process.

This week, I introduced people to the nuts and bolts behind Degree of Freedom - my one-year effort to learn everything I would from being enrolled in a liberal arts BA program in just twelve months using only free educational resources.

STEAM Education for Teachers across America will get a boost this summer when the School for Educational Leadership (SOLES) at the University of San ...

I decided to go back to school this year, although rather than travel the well-trodden path of specialization by obtaining a graduate degree, I decided it was time to re-do my undergraduate BA, this time taking all the courses I never got around to the first time around.

The national public is thirsty for simple solutions to the escalating costs of going to school. The global public is in search of in-country means of providing higher learning for their exploding middle class.