A mysterious blue pigment in the teeth of a medieval woman, and the evolution of online master’s degrees

Science Magazine Podcast

Science Podcast

News, News Commentary, Science

4.3 • 842 Ratings

🗓️ 10 January 2019

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) provide free lectures and assignments, and gained global attention for their potential to increase education accessibility. Plagued with high attrition rates and fewer returning students every year, MOOCs have pivoted to a new revenue model—offering accredited master’s degrees for professionals. Host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Justin Reich, an assistant professor in the Comparative Media Studies Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, about the evolution of MOOCs and how these MOOC professional programs may be reaching a different audience than traditional online education. Archaeologists were flummoxed when they found a brilliant blue mineral in the dental plaque of a medieval-era woman from Germany. It turned out to be lapis lazuli—an expensive pigment that would have had to travel thousands of kilometers from the mines of Afghanistan to a monastery in Germany. Host Sarah Crespi talks to Christina Warinner, a professor of archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, about how the discovery of this pigment shed light on the impressive life of the medieval woman, an artist who likely played a role in manuscript production. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image:Oberlin.edu/Wikimedia Commons; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Morgan State University, a Baltimore, Maryland Carnegie R2 doctoral research institution,
0:05.0	offers more than 100 academic programs and awards degrees at the Baccliorate, Masters, and Doctoral Levels,
0:12.0	is furthering their mission of growing the future leading the world.
0:16.0	Morgan continues to address the needs and challenges of the modern urban environment.
0:20.0	With a four-year quadrupling of research, more than a dozen new doctoral programs,
0:25.7	and eight new National Centers of Excellence,
0:28.5	Morgan is positioned to achieve Carnegie R-1 designation in the next five years.
0:33.7	To learn more about Morgan and their ascension to R1, visit morgan.edu slash research.
0:46.1	Welcome to the science podcast for January 11, 2019. I'm Sarah Crespi.
0:51.6	In this week's show, Megan Cantwell talks with Justin Reich about massive open online courses, also known as MOOCs. After coming online more than a decade ago, some of them are starting to pivot to a money-making model. Justin suggests there might be some good reasons for that. And I talk with Christina Warner about a skeleton with mysterious, microscopic blue crystals
1:12.3	stuck in the tartar of her teeth for more than a thousand years.
1:16.1	Christina, an archaeogeneticist, ended up collaborating with physicists and historians
1:20.5	to figure out what the substance was, where it came from, and how it came to be,
1:25.0	attached to the skeleton's teeth.
1:29.9	MOOCs, or massive open online courses, gain lots of attention in 2012 as a way to make
1:36.6	education accessible globally through access to free video lectures and assignments from
1:41.9	some of the world's best professors. Many enrolled in these courses,
1:46.4	but unfortunately, the attrition rate was also quite high. I'm Megan Cantwell, and I'm here
1:52.0	with Justin Rake to talk about the state of MOOCs in 2019 and why some are now offering
1:57.7	online master's degrees for professionals. Hey, Justin. Hi, how are you? Thanks for
2:02.3	having me. Yeah, it's great to have you on. Could you just give a background on how MOOCs were started?
2:07.7	Sure. In 2006, 2007, 2008, there were a group of mostly Canadian educators who were doing
	...

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