Cristina Mendoza's Essay (MOOC)

Through her personal experiences, Lugo-Lugo reels in her audience by connecting with them emotionally. She recalls many stories of when she was a victim of discrimination due to her race and sex. As a professor, students viewed her differently from her colleagues, due to the fact that she is Latina and a woman. On the first day of classes Lugo-Lugo explains one of the incidents that took place in her classroom, “Student: I do not feel like being in the classroom today, and since my parents pay for your

This statistic is important because it shows how much Chicano students have struggled in school at every grade level. Compare these numbers with the white community, “84 graduate from high school, 26 graduate with a bachelor 's degree and 10 earn a professional degree...Chicanas and Chicanos, have the lowest educational attainment of any group” there is great cause for concern (Marquez). These realities have a variety of causes as these students “usually attend racially segregated, overcrowded schools” and with “poorly maintained facilities, students are often enrolled in classes where undertrained, under credentialed faculty attempt to teach with minimal resources” many as "tracked into remedial or vocational program” (Marquez). David Scott ran data in academic performances by ethnic-studies students and states that Chicano students do better in school when having these programs available because they are a "substantial boost" for those poorest students (Scott 2012). If they don’t have these programs the result then is that “they drop out, or are pushed, out of the educational pipeline in higher numbers than any other group” (Marquez). While enrolled, “students often describe graduate school as a place where they feel invisible” as most programs “tend to be racially exclusive with predominately white students, faculty and curricula that omit Chicano histories and perspectives” (Marquez). For this reason, it is suggested by Scott for imperative

Throughout the essay, Lugo-Lugo wants one to become informed on prevalent issues in the average college classroom by allowing the reader to appeal to her through emotions. She uses personal stories and thoughts on college profiting accordingly to portray the issue amongst her classroom. As she mentions in her essay that her “...position within both U.S. society and academia is an important component of [her] discussion… A woman of color who is a Puerto Rican…. And those markers mean something at the beginning of the twenty-first century in and outside the U.S. academy” (Lugo-Lugo 190). She also describes how her image and identity is automatically judged, “These identities, they inform the way I position myself in relation to other gendered and

As a freshman college student I did not expect that through a fulfillment of graduation requirements, I would stumble across this particular Latino studies curriculum. When I registered for this course my mind was just focused on the fact of attending and perhaps learning a thing or two about my heritage. I also expected to find myself in a position of easy success for this course, and while I believe that I was quite successful, it was not as simple as I projected. The reason behind some of the challenges that I faced were because, unlike most college courses were students are just mindlessly completing homework assignments or writing essays for the purpose to be critiqued, this course engaged emotion and made the students truly immerse themselves

Although the subject of education, study behavior, has been viewed as a personal matter, we believe race and gender played a role in it. We interviewed a Senior Latino student named Irving Alvisurez. Alvisurez is a first generation college student that came from Los Angeles, California. When he first came to UCSB, he lived in FT and there was only four Hispanics on his whole floor, this gave him more opportunity to expose to foreign cultures and experiencing culture shock. He first majored in computer science and later changed to Chicano studies. As a first generation Latino, he felt more pressure from family rather than social pressures. His statement was supported by the arguments within his family based on his change of majors multiple times,

Lopez taught Chicano Studies at a local high school. The purpose of the class, according to Mr. Lopez, was to instill in his students a sense of pride in their Latino heritage, in the hopes that it would empower them.

There are many characteristics for online learners. My characteristics are scared, overwhelmed, and excited all in the same breath. However there are three main characteristics found in every person, entry characteristics, participation behaviors, and course outcomes. Such characteristics can be broken down into age, race, gender, and employment status. Although these are the main characteristics found in this article, I think there are much more to the characteristics to online learners then meet the eye. (British Journal of Education Vol 44

College, a universal, fundamental concept that the globe utilizes. Through a wide array of variations, countries across the world have developed their own meaning of what higher education is. However, the underlying tone of it all is the same, furthering one’s knowledge. With a vast number of schools from a broad range of locations trying to pull the population in, colleges compete with different tactics ranging from education relevance to evaluation. Consequently, problems have arisen from these approaches, addressed along the lines in an article called “A New Course” by Magdalena Kay, an associate professor of English at the University of Victoria and an educational film, “Ivory Tower” by Andrew Rossi, a graduate of Harvard and Yale University and a filmmaker. Furthermore, these problems change the meaning of college itself, no longer seen as an education, but as a commodity.

The exponential growth of the Latina/o population is symptomatic of an unquestionable shift in the demographic landscape, and is also reflected in the demographic make-up of higher education. As of 2012, Latina/os constitute the largest ethnic/racial minority group in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). Furthermore, Latina/o undergraduate students constitute the largest minority group on college campuses, at 19% of total students enrolled (Pew Research Center, 2014). Research also indicates that Latina/o students experience continued racial discrimination on college campuses (Chavez & French, 2007; Yosso, Smith, Ceja, & Solórzano, 2009; Cokley, Hall-Clark, & Hicks, 2011; Zeiders, Doane, & Roosa, 2012).

Latinos make up a quarter of students enrolled in our elementary schools today (Pew Hispanic Center, 2012). Among them lie the engineers, lawyers, scientists, and other professionals of our future. In order to create national leaders that reflect the population of the country, the U.S. must make Latino education policy a priority on the national agenda. For this reason, the most critical issue facing American higher education today is Latino student success and increasing the college degree attainment rates of Latino students.

Even with these disadvantages, Massive Open Online Courses are still a positive aspect for the current and future online students because with the free and easily accessible MOOCS classes, perspective online students have an alternative to education and it’s free! In order for the online universities to stay competitive, it is likely that MOOCS may force online universities to significantly lower online courses that are for credit (Casement, 2013).

MOOC providers have created video lectures, readings, and problem sets that seek to modify, and in some cases, replace entirely the need for a physical campus to complete a degree in higher education. The most notable MOOCs, Coursera, Udacity, and edX, emerged in 2012, “The Year of the MOOC” according to the New York Times, and have since attracted millions of registered students. Coursera and Udacity are both for-profit spin-offs from Stanford that offer a wide variety of courses taught by professors from some of the most prestigious universities in the world, such as Stanford itself, Princeton, the University of Michigan, and the University of Toronto. edX, on the other hand, is a non-profit partnership of MIT, Harvard, and Berkeley that offers both a platform that universities can customize to create their own courses, as well as a range of courses that are pre-developed by edX. In many cases, MOOCs are offered for free, incentivizing students to expand their knowledge with essentially nothing to lose. In other instances, when MOOCs have partnered with educational institutions to supplement or replace a physical classroom education, the MOOCs are offered for credit and at a lower cost than an in-person education.

In today’s society, so many people are continuing their education beyond high school. We realize that in order to make a decent living, a degree is most likely a requirement. In some cases even a bachelor’s degree is not enough to qualify for many positions. Nevertheless, thanks to technology, we now have the option to learn online or in a traditional classroom setting. There are very few differences between the two, and students need to understand that as much time and energy will need to be devoted to the online courses as on a campus. “A 2010 meta-analysis and review of online-learning studies concluded that online learning was as good as or slightly more effective than traditional face-to-face instruction” (Mendenhall, 2011).

Learning is more than just receiving information. Traditionally learning was to be in campus, where students would interact with one a another, there were no other ways for learners to get educated beside going to the classroom and listening to the instructor. Nowadays the Internet has brought different ways for people to receive information, such as getting education and degrees online. A few years ago online education was never thinkable, and yet it has become to reality and it is widely expanding with popularity. Online education is a type of educational instruction that delivers learning to individuals to their own homes, and it is getting very popular among nontraditional student and others. Individuals prefer online education

Technology is changing every aspect in our lives, even the way we learn. Online classes are a rapidly growing trend it today’s society. Online classes are a cost-effective substitute for traditional courses and more convenient for many, so more schools and universities are offering this option. Due to the increase in online course enrollment, people are questioning if students truly learn something from online classes because it’s not a traditional learning environment. Online classes are just, if not more, effective as traditional classes because grades have increased and online discussions provide students with the chance to interact through networking while earning a degree for less than what it would cost to enroll at the same university.