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Udacity Pearson Partnership - Sell-Out, Buy-In or the Future of MOOCs?

The recently announced partnership of Udacity with Pearson VUE testing centers has caused quite a stir in Higher Education community. I have read opinions that range from sell-out to a possible new legitimacy for the open university or MOOC movement.
Let’s have a look at the different facets of this new partnership and what might be some of its consequences or even benefits in the long term. Udacity calls itself a virtual university on a mission to democratize education. It first made the news when Udacity founder and Google employee Sebastian Thrun famously quit teaching at Stanford to now teach the world instead of some 200 students only. As Udacity state on their blog, they will still continue to create free online courses, but the Pearson partnership will allow students who wish to take an exam at the end of the course do exactly that.
The testing environment has been created to show “academic honesty” and will most likely give students an edge over their peers in Udacity’s job placement program. The exam itself is a multiple-choice and short answer mix of 90 min. Interestingly, the virtual university’s wildly popular programming class is not included in the new exam option. At least not now.
At this point, I see it as a logical move for Udacity. It builds trust, particularly on the employer side and allows students to show off what they’ve learned and have “proof” of it. Of course, Udacity could have taken another, more practical approach with employers, letting students demonstrate their skills upon real problem given to them. But calling themselves a virtual university, it is maybe not a bad move to go for something more traditional.
Pearson’s advantages are quite obvious. You may criticize this 800-pound gorilla in the education space for many things, but not for missing opportunities. Over the past few years Pearson has proven that the company knows very well what’s going on in online education and that’s true for both K12 and Higher Ed. I have written quite a bit on partnerships and also acquisitions and their impact on the online education landscape on this blog and also my personal blog. Let’s face it, Pearson is and will be present where the next disruption in the education market is going to happen. Whether we like it or not, or as my co-host on ENT like to put it, Pearson is like shopping at Walmart. It makes us feel bad, but everybody does it.
Besides, the exams offered on Udacity will take place in the some 4000 Pearson VUE testing centers worldwide and are not free, talking the economics of education here.
What might be the impact of this partnership? Top universities like Stanford or Harvard won’t have to worry. This partnership and a 90 min exam will not question expensive but high quality teaching and degrees or even make them look bad. We’re still some years away from the scenario of a skill-based society where what you know if you can prove it means more than a degree from a top tier university. We might come closer though.
The ones who really have a reason to be worried are the smaller or average, if you want to call them like that, universities and colleges. If we now start seeing more and more of the top professors, like Udacity or Coursera bring their courses online and teach the world for free, where is the incentive to study at an average college or university and pay tuition fees?
Picture via Shutterstock
What early US presidents looked like, according to AI-generated images
"Deepfakes" and "cheap fakes" are becoming strikingly convincing — even ones generated on freely available apps.
Abraham Lincoln, George Washington
- A writer named Magdalene Visaggio recently used FaceApp and Airbrush to generate convincing portraits of early U.S. presidents.
- "Deepfake" technology has improved drastically in recent years, and some countries are already experiencing how it can weaponized for political purposes.
- It's currently unknown whether it'll be possible to develop technology that can quickly and accurately determine whether a given video is real or fake.
The future of deepfakes
<p>In 2018, Gabon's president Ali Bongo had been out of the country for months receiving medical treatment. After Bongo hadn't been seen in public for months, rumors began swirling about his condition. Some suggested Bongo might even be dead. In response, Bongo's administration released a video that seemed to show the president addressing the nation.</p><p>But the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=324528215059254" target="_blank">video</a> is strange, appearing choppy and blurry in parts. After political opponents declared the video to be a deepfake, Gabon's military attempted an unsuccessful coup. What's striking about the story is that, to this day, experts in the field of deepfakes can't conclusively verify whether the video was real. </p><p>The uncertainty and confusion generated by deepfakes poses a "global problem," according to a <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/is-seeing-still-believing-the-deepfake-challenge-to-truth-in-politics/#cancel" target="_blank">2020 report from The Brookings Institution</a>. In 2018, the U.S. Department of Defense released some of the first tools able to successfully detect deepfake videos. The problem, however, is that deepfake technology keeps improving, meaning forensic approaches may forever be one step behind the most sophisticated forms of deepfakes. </p><p>As the 2020 report noted, even if the private sector or governments create technology to identify deepfakes, they will:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"...operate more slowly than the generation of these fakes, allowing false representations to dominate the media landscape for days or even weeks. "A lie can go halfway around the world before the truth can get its shoes on," warns David Doermann, the director of the Artificial Intelligence Institute at the University of Buffalo. And if defensive methods yield results short of certainty, as many will, technology companies will be hesitant to label the likely misrepresentations as fakes."</p>The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced a number of new behaviours into daily routines, like physical distancing, mask-wearing and hand sanitizing. Meanwhile, many old behaviours such as attending events, eating out and seeing friends have been put on hold.
VR experiments manipulate how people feel about coffee
A new study looks at how images of coffee's origins affect the perception of its premiumness and quality.
Expert drinking coffee while wearing a VR headset.
- Images can affect how people perceive the quality of a product.
- In a new study, researchers show using virtual reality that images of farms positively influence the subjects' experience of coffee.
- The results provide insights on the psychology and power of marketing.
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Research has shown how important empathy is to relationships, but there are limits to its power.
