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THE DAILY ILLINI
TUESDAY February 18, 2014
5he independent student newspaper at the University of Illinois since 1871
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Massive online courses help judge quality
44˚ | 28˚ Vol. 143 Issue 79
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Stuck in the street
But these free courses, which enroll tens of thousands of participants from around the world, require plenty of resources. Each class costs about $30,000 to $50,000 to produce, not including the faculty members’ time spent on its development. In addition to faculty members’ curricula, the MOOCs require a staff of instructional designers, who in turn design the MOOC presentation; audio and video producers to nail down technical details; and copywriters to ensure that the material is in the public domain. On average, production takes place in five to six months; however, because of the extra pressure that a larger and more advanced audience adds, the
BY MARYCATE MOST STAFF WRITER
Massive open online courses have unveiled a gold mine of data to University faculty and staff. Typically, instructors evaluating the effectiveness of their teaching styles can only gather data from relatively small classes. But with the help of data from massive open online courses, or MOOCs, an instructor’s sample size expands from 50 to 50,000 participants. “Nobody else has a data set like that to explore,” said Chuck Tucker, co-chair of the MOOC Strategy Advisory Committee. “There is data that you can get from a MOOC — from Coursera — that you can’t get from anywhere else. That is the power of the very large MOOC.”
SEE MOOCS | 3A
What’s new with MOOCs?
In the year that the University has hosted MOOCs on Coursera, many changes have been made to the style of these MOOCs. 1. Community T.A. — A Coursera-hired and vetted teaching assistant helps answer questions that may arise from MOOC participants. 2. Flipping the Classroom — University instructors use the material from MOOCs in their classes. 3. MOOC data harvesting — The Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning now compiles data from the MOOCs to help instructors enhance their teaching. 4. Format flexibility — The University has helped shape some elements of Coursera to make courses more effective and user-friendly.
JOHNATHAN HETTINGER THE DAILY ILLINI
A Reinhart Food Service truck is jack-knifed on Green Street between Fourth and Fifth streets in Champaign on Monday. Police shut down Green Street between Fourth and Sixth streets while the driver worked to get the semi-truck unstuck.
Liberty Power deceives C-U area residents Alternate utility company uses aggressive tactics to gain customers
SOURCE: DEANNA RAINERI, ASSOCIATE DEAN OF ATLAS
UIC faculty plan to strike after failed proposal
BY STANTON POLANSKI STAFF WRITER
Jason Swanson started to realize the woman at his door was not who she said she was. Although Swanson felt something wasn’t right, he still handed her the electric bill sitting on his kitchen table that had been delivered the day before. This woman, an employee for Liberty Power, claimed that she represented Swanson’s electric company. Before Champaign and Urbana aggregated their electricity in 2012, Ameren was the default electric company for the community. But in 2012, the governments took bids from electric suppliers for the cheapest rates: Champaign chose Integrys Energy Services and Urbana chose Homefield Energy. Ameren now handles the transmission and distribution of electricity. Champaign Deputy Mayor Tom Bruno said the plan has saved the community more than a million dollars. Recently, other electric companies have been trying to pry residents from their cheaper contracts. On Jan. 29, Roland Realty sent an email to its residents explaining that Clearview Energy Partners, LLC had been soliciting its tenants in the evenings.
day’s planned strike, though a university spokesman said the administration offered to meet Monday. “The negotiations have been dragging on almost interminably,” said UIC economics professor Joseph Persky, president of the union, UIC United Faculty, whose members have not had a salary increase since the group formed. “I never thought we would get to the point where we had to strike to get a contract. It is time to deal with this.” College faculty strikes are rare, and this one is especially notable because it comes at a time when national unions are pushing to organize faculty at research institutions across the country, including at U.
BY JODI S. COHEN CHICAGO TRIBUNE
University of Illinois at Chicago faculty members are poised to strike Tuesday for the first time in campus history. The two-day walkout could cancel hundreds of classes at the Near West Side public institution. The union, which represents about 1,150 full-time tenured and nontenured faculty members, was certified in 2012 but has not yet reached agreement on its first contract with the university despite dozens of bargaining sessions, including during the past three days. Despite making some progress over the weekend, the union has called the university’s latest proposals “insufficient.” There are no bargaining sessions scheduled before Tues-
SEE UIC | 3A
INSIDE
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JASON SWANSON
DOCTORAL GRADUATE
when it aggregated its electricity. All he needed was to sign one of her forms and his bills would be lowered. This is not true because Ameren has lower rates than Liberty Power. “Ultimately, the awful thing about it is that, had I not looked at the rate right there, my rate would have doubled,” he said. “In my case, I had about a $100 electric bill last month because
SEE ELECTRICITY | 3A
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“Ultimately, the awful thing about it is that, had I not looked at the rate right there, my rate would have doubled.”
it’s been so brutally cold. Going to $200 would be crippling because I’m unemployed.” After his skepticism and denials led to a new sales pitch, Swanson knew what he had to do to make sure he would not have an account with Liberty Power. “I had to get more aggressive than her,” he said. “I had to take it up a notch to really be the alpha in that exchange for her to delete their information on her iPad. If someone hadn’t got that aggressive, I think she would have kept the information.” On Feb. 16, a notice was posted on the City of Champaign’s Municipal Electric Aggregation website, warning Champaign residents of Liberty Power’s solicitations. “Liberty Power is NOT the City’s vendor for the Municipal Electric Aggregation program,” the notice read. “Citizens should NEVER compromise their security by providing Ameren account information to anyone.” The notice added that complaints about solicitation can be fi led with the Illinois Commerce Commission Consumer Services Division or with the Illinois Attorney General’s Office. It has since been removed from the city’s website. Nichole Best, sophomore in FAA, dealt with a similar iPadcarrying, fast-talking woman about two weeks ago. But Best
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For Swanson, he was confronted with aggressive tactics about two weeks ago. As a recent doctoral graduate who is working toward becoming a tenured track professor, Swanson has been spending his time since graduation trying to publish as many articles as he can. So around 11 a.m., dressed in a hoodie and sweatpants, Swanson was sitting on his couch “cranking out an article.” Then came an interruption. “So there’s this knock on the door and there’s a woman, maybe about 25 years old,” Swanson said. “It was one of those frigid, frigid cold mornings and I invited her inside because I didn’t want her standing out there.” Once Swanson scooped up the bill that had been sitting on his kitchen table and handed it to the employee, she opened it and began taking down information. “She was on-the-clock,” he said. “It was as if she was trying to defuse a bomb or something. She was putting info into her iPad at an unbelievable rate.” After introducing herself as a representative of the city’s main electric provider to Swanson, the lanyard that looped down to the woman’s bellybutton suggested otherwise. On it read:
Liberty Power. “Oh I see you’re with Liberty Power — are you not with Ameren?” Swanson recalls asking. “Well, Liberty Power and Ameren are working together,” Swanson said the woman replied. Swanson thought to himself: “OK ... That’s another red fl ag. Well, what the hell is going on here? This is getting really, really weird.” The woman then told Swanson that Liberty Power is the company that the community chose
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