Massive open online courses have the potential to alter how we teach and learn as a society, but unlike other methods that are steeped in centuries of trial and error, the MOOC MMOC concept remains experimental and unproven -- often criticized as better suited for edification than rigorous education. Like edX, Coursera is working to challenge that assumption, and today the online course provider announced partnerships with ten public university systems that'll integrate lessons from Coursera into the classroom. Most notably, The State University of New York is participating, which boasts 64 campuses and an enrollment of nearly half a million students. While its implementation remains up in the air, SUNY aims to introduce Coursera materials this fall and over the next few years as part of its Open SUNY initiative.

Like SUNY, all partner schools may adapt lessons from Coursera as they see fit, and professors will have the opportunity to develop online courses for Coursera. Most significantly, the pilot programs will give universities an opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of Coursera material, which could go a long way toward legitimizing the MOOC MMOC concept. As another happy consequence, universities may choose to offer for-credit courses from Coursera to non-matriculated students. For a greater understanding of this grand experiment, just hit up the source links.

[Image credit: Dave Herholz / Flickr]

Filed under: Internet

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Via: The Verge, InformationWeek

Source: Coursera, SUNY

For most of us, molecular bonding only really exists as a classroom concept. Some scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory can now claim more tangible knowledge, however: they're the first to have taken truly clear snapshots of bonding in progress. While trying to create graphene nanostructures and observe them with an atomic force microscope, a lab team spotted molecules forming their individual, atom-level links during a chemical reaction. The resulting shots were nearly textbook material, too -- as the molecules were neatly placed on a flat surface, the researchers identified the order and nature of each bond. While the images will only be immediately useful for the nanostructure research at hand, they may add a welcome dash of reality to future chemistry lessons.

Filed under: Science, Alt

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Via: Phys.org

Source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Calling a clock the most accurate ever may sound like hyperbole, but physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado have built a pair of devices that can claim that title. The team used an optical lattice to address an issue that plagues atomic clockmakers: constantly shifting frequencies that negatively impact the accuracy of their measurements. For example, a single second can be defined by the frequency of light emitted by an atom when electrons jump from one state to the next, but those frequencies change as the atom moves. The optical lattice essentially suspends atoms to minimize the Doppler effect produced by that movement. By combining the lattice with the element ytterbium, the group was able to create a device that measures time with a precision of one part in 10¹⁸. To put that into perspective, Andrew Ludlow, one of the paper's authors, said, "A measurement at the 10¹⁸ fractional level is equivalent to specifying the age of the known universe to a precision of less than one second." To read more about the team's work, you can find the full PDF at the source.

Filed under: Science, Alt

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Via: MIT Technology Review, Gizmodo

Source: Cornell University Library (PDF)