Tuesday August 27, 2013 year: 133 No. 65
the student voice of
The Ohio State University
www.thelantern.com
thelantern
OSU offers online courses to general public
sports
DAN HOPE Oller reporter hope.46@osu.edu
4A
Football on the brain
With the Buckeyes’ first game approaching, coach Urban Meyer said football is all he wants to talk about.
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While Ohio State is planning to create more massive open online course offerings for no class credit, the handful already offered through one partnership have returned low completion rates. OSU is one of 85 universities offering free online courses through Coursera, a website that offers classes online to students worldwide at no cost. Thus far, three of OSU’s Coursera courses — Calculus One, TechniCity and Writing II: Rhetorical Composing — have been through one run to completion, Wayne Carlson, OSU’s vice provost for undergraduate studies and dean of undergraduate education, and Tom Evans, senior instructional designer and open courses coordinator for OSU, both said. The enrollment numbers in each of the three courses, which cannot be taken for university credit, have been massive in comparison to traditional courses OSU offers, but the completion rates have not been nearly as high. Of the approximately 47,000 students enrolled in the Calculus I course, only about 1,800 completed it, Evans said. More than 30,000 students enrolled in the rhetorical writing course, Evans said, but Carlson said only about 500 completed the course. Carlson said approximately 400 students
Course
Enrolled
Completed
Calculus One
47,000
1,800
Writing II: Rhetorical Composing
30,000
500
20,000 -21,000
400
TechniCity
(City and Regional Planning)
< 5% completion rate for each class Source: Reporting completed the TechniCity course out of the 20,000 to 21,000 enrolled. Though all of the courses had a completion rate of less than 5 percent, Carlson said those completion rates are “not inconsistent with Coursera’s statistics,” and said the low percentages do not concern him. “It’s looking at who might be taking those courses,” Carlson said. “Of the people who signed up for the course, probably three-fourths or maybe even more already had degrees. So they’re not taking this course in order to earn credit hours, in order to earn a college diploma.” Carlson added there would be cause for concern if the classes were being taken for credit. “I would worry about it if you had those kinds of numbers and you sold
KAYLA ZAMARY / Design editor it as a course for credit, because that would be some pretty dismal completion rates,” he said, “but the completion rate is meaningless if you look at it from the perspective of who’s signing up for it now.” Some universities have furthered their partnership with Coursera to offer for-credit courses for a fee, but OSU does not expect to do so. “I don’t think that the relationship with Coursera will expand,” Carlson said. Evans said offering massive open online courses for credit is not a “strategic goal” of the university, but added that the possibility is not being written off. “A lot of our ambition and our efforts are a result of interest and requests from the faculty and the
colleges at Ohio State,” Evans said. “Right now, we’re not currently looking at MOOCs for credit, but if people, faculty and departments are interested in it, then we’ll start looking into that and seeing what that takes and figuring out what that means.” OSU currently offers six courses through Coursera: two calculus courses, two courses through the College of Pharmacy, a city and regional planning course and a rhetorical writing course. Students throughout the world can enroll in those courses through Coursera. Evans said from the approximately 47,000 students that participated in the first run of OSU’s calculus course on Coursera, OSU received roughly the same amount of data they would receive in 10.3 years from traditional education. OSU mathematics professor Jim Fowler, the head instructor and project manager for OSU’s calculus MOOC program, said technology developed for the Coursera calculus classes is being used to better instruct local OSU students taking in-person calculus courses. “For local students, building all the content on Coursera means that we’re also producing a lot of content that’s helpful for our in-person students,” Fowler said. “It would have been hard, I think, to justify building a lot of this stuff if there (weren’t) multiple things you could do with it. The fact that we can produce content that has some global purpose but also can be used
continued as Courses on 3A
Man pulled from Mirror Lake out of ICU
1B
Miley shocks at VMAs
Our columnist takes a look at the best, worst and most shocking from Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards.
campus
LIZ YOUNG Campus editor young.1693@osu.edu The man who was pulled out of Mirror Lake Aug. 18 was reported to be in fair condition at the Wexner Medical Center and no longer in the Intensive Care Unit as of Monday afternoon, according to Wexner Medical Center spokeswoman Marti Leitch. Tushar Shriram Kabre, age 28, was rescued from the lake after a 911 call reporting a “person in distress in Mirror Lake” was received at approximately 5 p.m., and other bystanders approached the Ohio State Public Safety Mobile Command Unit that was in the area to get additional help. The female OSU student who made the call has declined to comment on the situation. Police officers and Student Safety officers jumped into Mirror Lake to pull Kabre from the water and bystanders reported paramedics performed CPR and chest resuscitations for several minutes without any apparent reaction from him. Kabre was in critical condition in the ICU until he was declared to be in fair condition Monday, Leitch said. OSU Adminstration and Planning spokeswoman Lindsay Komlanc said in an email that Kabre “received a
masters of science in chemistry degree in Autumn 2011” and that he is not currently enrolled at the university. OSU Ph.D. candidate Krishna Patel, an acquaintance of Kabre’s from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, told The Lantern Aug. 19 that Kabre was a student from India and he didn’t know of any relatives of Kabre’s in the area. Attempts to locate relatives of Kabre were unsuccessful. Jumping in Mirror Lake before the OSU football game against the University of Michigan is a university tradition, and University Police Chief Paul Denton said whether the incident will affect the jump, which is not a university sanctioned event, will not be determined by University Police. Student Life spokesman Dave Isaacs said he was not in the position to discuss the incident Aug. 19 because the details of what took place are not yet clear. How it will affect the jump is unknown. “Certainly the Mirror Lake jump will be discussed and, if appropriate, we will reflect on the unfortunate incident of another night,” Isaacs said. Isaacs said until the police investigation is completed it was “premature” to make any decisions. Isaacs said Monday there had not been any meetings that discussed the incident and its possible effects.
Attempted armed robbery reported LIZ YOUNG Campus editor young.1693@osu.edu An attempted armed robbery reported on Woody Hayes Drive led to University Police issuing a public safety notice for Ohio State’s campus Monday evening. The attempted crime was reported at 7:17 p.m. Monday. A female OSU student told police she was stopped by three white males and a white female, all appearing to be in their mid-20s, in a red GMC SUV, according to the notice. The vehicle was traveling on Woody Hayes Drive near the Olentangy River bridge when it stopped and one of the males reportedly demanded the student’s backpack while “brandishing a red handgun,” the notice said. The suspects then allegedly left eastbound after the student refused to hand over her bag. The safety notice was issued approximately two hours after the incident reportedly occurred. University Police representatives did not immediately return requests for comment Monday evening.
2A Dr. J advises students 10 ways to stay safe
Dissecting ash tree eaters
An Ohio State professor won an international award for his research with emerald ash borers.
10 Safety Tips
weather high 89 low 74
1. Use university resources
t-storms
3. Take part in neighborhood safety
2. Be informed 4. Share the Road 5. Be cautious
W TH F SA
6. Deter thieves
87/69
t-storms
87/66
partly cloudy
87/66
partly cloudy
9. Prevent fires
87/69
t-storms
10. Be a good neighbor
www.weather.com
7. Be a good sport 8. Party responsibly
Source: Reporting
KAYLA ZAMARY / Design editor
KATHLEEN MARTINI Lantern reporter martini.35@osu.edu Many Ohio State students have probably been told by their loved ones to stay safe both on- and off-campus, but a recent OSU email attempted to address some specifics of how they can protect themselves from harm. OSU Vice President of Student Life Javaune Adams-Gaston sent out an email Aug. 22 urging students to stay safe on and off campus. This is the second year Adams-Gaston has sent out an email with safety tips, and this year’s email included roughly the same 10 tips from last year. Previously, Adams-Gaston had used her column on the Buckeye Net News weekly email to talk about safety, but she decided last year to use email to reach students, OSU Student Life spokesman Dave Isaacs said. “What Dr. J wanted to do with this is come up with a broad list of safety topics,” Isaacs said. “Obviously, there could be more, but she wanted to pick the ones that she felt most impacted students.” Adams-Gaston included links to campus resources in the email to give students access to more information, Isaacs said.
“She just thought this was a good time, with students coming back to campus for the start of the school year, to put this out,” Isaacs said. “Many of the safety tips are really common sense, but I think it’s always good to just have a reminder about these issues and about safety.” The tips included “Be informed,” “Deter thieves,” “Party responsibly” and “Be a good neighbor,” among others. The email was sent to all OSU students, but some did not take the message personally. “Emails get really impersonal, so I opened it, I kind of glanced at it, kind of read the bolded words, but I didn’t really go into detail about reading it,” said Cailin Manning, a second-year in dance. “I think at a school with this big of a population, it’s really hard to reach out and get really personal with messages like that.” Other students thought the message had a positive effect. “I don’t know if they (most students) read it, but I know that it’s pretty effective at least getting it out and at least getting people to see it,” said Christa Moore, a first-year in psychology and criminology. Moore received the email but did not read it. Although neither paid much attention to the email initially, both Manning and Moore agreed
continued as Safety on 3A 1A