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Daily Archives: January 23, 2014

HarvardX and MITx: The First Year of Open Online Courses, Fall 2012-Summer 2013

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Ho, Andrew Dean and Reich, Justin and Nesterko, Sergiy O and Seaton, Daniel Thomas and Mullaney, Tommy and Waldo, Jim and Chuang, Isaac, HarvardX and MITx: The First Year of Open Online Courses, Fall 2012-Summer 2013 (January 21, 2014). Ho, A. D., Reich, J., Nesterko, S., Seaton, D. T., Mullaney, T., Waldo, J., & Chuang, I. (2014). HarvardX and MITx: The first year of open online courses (HarvardX and MITx Working Paper No. 1).. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2381263

“HarvardX and MITx are collaborative institutional efforts between Harvard University and MIT to enhance campus-based education, advance educational research, and increase access to online learning opportunities worldwide. Over the year from the fall of 2012 to the summer of 2013, HarvardX and MITx launched 17 courses on edX, a jointly founded platform for delivering massive open online courses (MOOCs). In that year, 43,196 registrants earned certificates of completion. Another 35,937 registrants explored half or more of course content without certification. An additional 469,702 registrants viewed less than half of the content. And 292,852 registrants never engaged with the online content. In total, there were 841,687 registrations from 597,692 unique users across the first year of HarvardX and MITx courses. This report is a joint effort by institutional units at Harvard and MIT to describe the registrant and course data provided by edX in the context of the diverse efforts and intentions of HarvardX and MITx instructor teams.” See also the author’s related blog posting.

Preliminary international banking statistics at end-September 2013

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“The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) released today international banking statistics at end-September 2013. The third quarter of 2013 saw another sizeable contraction in international banking activity. Between end-June and end-September 2013, the cross-border claims of BIS reporting banks fell by $508 billion, or 1.8%, to $28.5 trillion. Interoffice positions accounted for most of the contraction, continuing the… Continue Reading

A sound capital planning process: fundamental elements

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“The Basel Committee has issued these sound practices to foster overall improvement in banks’ capital planning practices. Indeed, an important lesson from the financial crisis concerned the need for banks to improve and strengthen their capital planning. Some of the observed weaknesses reflected processes that were not sufficiently comprehensive, appropriately forward-looking or adequately formalised. As a consequence,… Continue Reading

Revised good practice principles for supervisory colleges – consultative document

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“The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has today issued a consultative document on Revised good practice principles for supervisory colleges. The Committee seeks to ensure that the principles remain fit for purpose and that they describe how high quality supervisory colleges typically function. The key changes include the following: Principle 1 now places greater emphasis on collaboration and… Continue Reading

Monetary policy and financial stability: what role in prevention and recovery?

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Monetary policy and financial stability: what role in prevention and recovery? by Claudio Borio – Bank for International Settlements (BIS) “If the criteria for an institution’s success are diffusion and longevity, then central banking has been hugely successful. But if the criterion is the degree to which it has achieved its goals, then the evaluation has to be… Continue Reading

EU action plan to harvest renewable energy from Europe’s seas

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Commission sets out an action plan to support the development of blue energy “The European Commission has unveiled an action plan to help harvest more renewable energy from Europe’s seas and oceans. The plan aims to boost this emerging “blue energy” sector – which includes technologies that can capture the energy from waves, tides and temperature… Continue Reading

Predictive Modeling With Big Data: Is Bigger Really Better?

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Junqué de FortunyEnric, MartensDavid, and ProvostFoster. Big Data. December 2013, 1(4): 215-226. doi:10.1089/big.2013.0037. Published in Volume: 1 Issue 4: January 7, 2014 Online Ahead of Print: October 24, 2013. “With the increasingly widespread collection and processing of “big data,” there is natural interest in using these data assets to improve decision making. One of the best understood ways to… Continue Reading

New GAO Report on Fair Labor Standards Act

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FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT: The Department of Labor Should Adopt a More Systematic Approach to Developing Its Guidance, GAO-14-69, Dec 18, 2013 “Substantial increases occurred over the last decade in the number of civil lawsuits filed in federal district court alleging violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, as amended (FLSA). Federal courts in most… Continue Reading

New Report Focuses on Disaster Unpreparedness

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Meritalk report [presentation] [snipped]: •”Federal IT professionals give themselves high DR2 grades: •One in four give their agency an “A” in DR2 preparedness and nearly all give a passing grade •Despite the high marks, many agencies fail to test their data recovery capabilities: •In the last 12 months, only 54% of agencies have tested their… Continue Reading

Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board Issues Report on NSA Massive Metadata Surveillance

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Report on the Telephone Records Program Conducted under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and on the Operations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. January 23, 2014. “The PCLOB is an independent bipartisan agency within the executive branch established by the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007.6 The Board is comprised of… Continue Reading