Techno-News Blog

By C. RAMSEY FAHS and DANIEL P. WOOD, Harvard Crimson

Harvard faculty members have demonstrated an increased interest in the “flipped” classroom model, the practice of moving some material previously taught in lecture to pre-class video recordings, according to faculty involved in pedagogical research. Robert A. Lue, faculty director of the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, said faculty members interested in an “active learning” model have recently consulted the Bok Center in increasing numbers, though the center does not keep statistics on flipped courses. To support interested professors, the Bok Center holds weekly “Active Learning Lunches.” The ramp-up in faculty interest comes as researchers publish more studies on the active learning model and others internally raise concerns about faculty and student workload under the flipped model.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/10/9/faculty-weigh-flipped-model/

By Nick Anderson, Washington Post

Four years after the debut of free online courses from elite universities, the statistics on this unprecedented digital outreach to the world are staggering. Coursera, a leading platform for these courses, reports 15 million people globally have registered on the education Web site that distributes free interactive content from 120 institutions. They are not all just browsers and dabblers. The company counts 2.5 million “course completers.” For comparison, the federal government reports about 17.5 million undergraduates enrolled in all U.S. colleges.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/10/08/global-online-college-courses-a-career-booster/

By Tara García Mathewson, Education Dive

For-profit Apollo Education Group has been in a steep decline for five years as the University of Phoenix loses enrollment and shrinks in response, but CEO Greg Cappelli believes the future is bright. In a sprawling piece for the Arizona Republic, Ronald J. Hansen writes that net revenues have fallen 47% since its peak in 2010, the stock price is down 82% in the same time period, and student enrollment is expected to be down 70%, comparing next year to 2010. The company is still profitable, however, and Cappelli has reminded investors the profit margins were favorable in 2002 before the University of Phoenix entered its heydey.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/u-of-phoenix-hopes-enrollment-losses-stabilize-at-2002-levels/406817/

By Sarina Rhinehart, Ames Tribune

With the first of four sessions of Iowa State University’s first massive open online course (MOOC), which covered the Iowa Caucuses, having just wrapped up, political science professor Steffen Schmidt said the session was “very satisfying,” having had more than 1,300 enrolled in the first session, and at this time, more than 2,000 enrolled through the four different sessions of the course. “It was great; it was fun,” Schmidt said. “There were a good mix of people from different kinds of backgrounds.” This free courses offered to anyone in the world with Internet access, is the first MOOC course offered by ISU, and focused on the first-in-the-nation Iowa Caucuses, including lectures, interviews, readings, quizzes and discussion forums.

http://amestrib.com/news/isu-online-course-iowa-caucuses-draws-international-attention

By COLLIN BINKLEY, Associated Press

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has offered free online courses for the last four years with one major downside: They didn’t count toward a degree. That’s about to change. In a pilot project announced Wednesday, students will be able to take a semester of free online courses in one of MIT’s graduate programs and then, if they pay a “modest fee” of about $1,500 and pass an exam, they will earn a MicroMaster’s credential, the school said.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/1st-time-mits-free-online-classes-carry-credit-34313786

By Barbara A. Popp, eSchool News

It’s no secret that virtual education has become more and more widespread, with new online schools popping up regularly and brick-and-mortar institutions adding a blended component. With that in mind, certain strategies, tips, and guidelines have been proven to help instructors begin what can seem like an overwhelming task—teaching a course without ever even needing to physically see her students. Throughout my years of experience, I’ve compiled a list of ten best practices and tips that I believe can help save instructor time.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2015/10/08/online-educators-585/

by eSchool News

A new resource aims to share tips on how to establish a collaborative environment in classrooms, and it also provides relevant and engaging lessons, organized by subject matter and grade level. Available for download at http://news.mimio.com/collaborate-to-the-core-2015-pr at no charge, the 36-page guide includes “7 Tips to Your Collaborative Classroom Makeover,” which discusses how teachers can arrange their classroom to promote more collaborative learning.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2015/10/07/guide-collaborative-672/

By Heather Betancourth, Houston Chronicle

Colleges across Texas have made it easier to attend class online than ever before. Not only is online learning flexible and convenient, but students actually are preferring it. San Jacinto College started a basic online learning program in 1998. During that time when the Internet was starting to emerge as a new technology, the program mainly offered VHS tape checkout. Today, students can do everything on the web: registering for classes, paying tuition and ordering books. The also can use the web to attend class, meet with professors and chat with peers. “People say students aren’t successful with online learning, but we’ve found that they are very excited about those classes,” said Niki Whiteside, vice president of educational technology services at San Jacinto College.

http://www.chron.com/news/article/Options-for-online-learning-abound-6556787.php

by Justine Thomas, Observer-Reporter

There are many myths about online training, and even more people who believe in them. Even so, it is a great pleasure to see that the number of students who prefer online education is growing. People aspire to get knowledge despite any myths and misleading ideas. This article contains most common myths about online training debunked and we hope it will help you to start and succeed in learning.

http://www.observer-reporter.com/article/20151007/BLOGS20/151009558

By: Erin Bamer, the Argonaut

Like some people know they want to be a police officer or an astronaut, University of Idaho Senior Edwin Latrell has known he was going to serve in the military since before he can remember. “I have known since I was little that I would do the military,” Latrell said. “There was not a doubt.” Latrell enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 2004, two years after he started his education at UI. He said he lacked energy and enthusiasm for school when he first enrolled at the university and ended up dropping out of many of his classes. “I was the best student at not being the best student,” Latrell said. While he was enlisted, Latrell remained a student at UI and completed 40 courses online in seven different countries including Afghanistan, Iraq and Cuba.

http://www.uiargonaut.com/2015/10/05/learning-and-serving/

by Rob Kelly, Faculty Focus

In their 1995 Change magazine article, “From Teaching to Learning—a New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education,” Robert B. Barr and John Tagg described the Learning Paradigm, which emphasizes learning over teaching and student discovery and construction of knowledge over transfer of knowledge from instructor to student. They wrote: “A paradigm shift is taking hold in American higher education. In its briefest form, the paradigm that has governed our colleges is this: A college is an institution that exists to provide instruction. Subtly but profoundly we are shifting to a new paradigm: A college is an institution that exists to produce learning. This shift changes everything. It is both needed and wanted.” The Learning Paradigm (as opposed to the Instruction Paradigm), emphasizes the students’ active role in learning and the purpose of that learning, which can be strong motivators for students. The challenge for instructors is to cede some control of learning to the students.

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/the-learning-paradigm-in-online-courses/

By Ryan Robinson, Entrepreneurs

Starting a business is no easy feat. Especially if you’re trying to pull it off while you hold onto your day job. From learning how to prioritize your efforts (and limited resources) on what matters most at the beginning, to becoming a stand-out marketer, and building the skills that’ll help your business succeed, these essential online business courses will teach you how to launch successfully today. Here are my picks for the 12 best online courses for starting a business.

http://entrepreneurs.about.com/od/Technology/fl/12-Best-Online-Courses-for-Starting-a-Business.htm

by Business World India

The digital wave in the country has transformed the entire education ecosystem, making it more tech-oriented and student-friendly. As technology seeped into every aspect of life, it was only a matter of time for it to penetrate one of the most important facets of one’s existence i.e. education. Online learning presents various benefits such as easy accessibility, on-the-go learning, flexibility and convenience to name a few. These are the main reasons behind the increasing inclination of people towards this mode. In fact, it has quickly become a default way of studying and has evolved from being an option to being a need. Digitisation of the education landscape is also letting the students residing in tier-2 and tier-3 cities reap the benefits of quality education tools. On the other hand, however, offline learning also has its own merits, which definitely cannot be overlooked. Therefore, a seamless blend of both offline and online pedagogical approaches is now the need of the hour.

http://www.businessworld.in/education-institutions/e-learning-becomes-essential-india#sthash.ZWBaZ5bo.dpbs

By Ron Bethke, eCampus News

According to ed-tech experts, responding as flexibly as possible to often unpredictable trends and new technologies is critical for maximizing their potential positive impact on learning. “Black Swans” was the latest webinar hosted by The New Media Consortium in their Beyond the Horizon series, and featured a panel of five experts led and moderated by Dr. Ruben Puentedura, founder of the Hippasus educational consulting firm.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/technologies/ed-tech-future-101/

by Associated Press

University students have saved $8 million over the last three years by opting into a digital learning program that uses electronic textbooks, school officials said. “Students have been complaining for a long time about the high cost of textbooks,” Anastasia Morrone, associate vice president for learning technologies at IU, told The Indianapolis Star. “Really, it does give you pause why a book has to cost $300.”

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/electronic-textbooks-indiana-984/

by Ellen Wexler, Chronicle of Higher Ed

When refugees want to enter higher education, they often lack the paperwork. But in the past few months, some online universities have been reaching out to those students, telling refugees that they don’t have to provide comprehensive records to enroll and offering free tuition. The University of the People, an online degree program based in the United States, is one of those institutions. Founded in 2009, the university charges students a $100 examination fee for each course as well as a one-time application fee. Last month the university announced that it would admit 500 Syrian refugees, including those without official transcripts and documentation. The refugees will be able to study either business administration or computer science, and those who cannot afford the examination and application fees may apply for scholarships.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/can-online-education-help-refugees-earn-degrees/57456

BY KEVIN MANEY, Newsweek

A company called Udacity, partnering with Google, shows us that we’ve been focused on the wrong disruption. The big change won’t be the digitization of college—it will be the unbundling of the college degree into discrete, focused chunks, which Udacity calls nanodegrees. In other words, technology will assault the college degree, not the experience of college, and that will make all the difference. Technology tends to unbundle stuff. Look how it’s unbundling television, or how it unbundled the music album. The college degree is a bundle that doesn’t work for everybody and creates unnatural market conditions, which is why college costs consistently rise faster than inflation. The next generation will be able to pull apart the college bundle the way people today are pulling the plug on cable.

http://www.newsweek.com/college-nanodegrees-379542

by Robert Talbert, Chronicle of Higher Ed

There was no way we could simply replicate in the online course the presentations that happen in the face-to-face version of the course. But we could use the online setting to do certain things that are uniquely suited to the online environment. So instead of having students present their solutions to problems in class, students presented their solutions to online homework questions by filming themselves and then posting the videos to YouTube.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/how-student-video-presentations-can-build-community-in-an-online-course/57435

by Anastasia Salter, Chronicle of Higher Ed

I’ve been chronicling my experiences this semester adapting my approach to teaching from my previous experience with small courses to a new challenge of large-scale classes, and particularly to the needs of a large online course. The most overwhelming aspect for me so far has been the challenge of grading and providing meaningful feedback. This is unsurprising, given grading has been one of our most debated subjects here at ProfHacker. Taking grading to new scales has definitely required me to rethink my teaching and methods.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/5-tips-for-handling-grading-in-large-online-classes/61131

By C. RAMSEY FAHS, Harvard Crimson

With the addition of Princeton to its list of partners, edX, the non-profit MOOC provider that Harvard and MIT founded in 2012, now has more Ivy League partners than its largest for-profit competitor, Coursera. Princeton’s decision, announced on Sept. 24, comes just three months after the University of Pennsylvania joined edX with the intention of publishing three courses on the virtual education platform. Both schools were among Coursera’s first four partner universities and will continue to publish courses on Coursera’s platform as well. With the creation of PrincetonX and PennX, edX now has six Ivy League partner’s to Coursera’s five. Princeton, Penn, and Columbia publish courses to both platforms. Today, Coursera lists over 133 total partner organizations on its website, while edX lists 82.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/10/2/edx-ivy-league-coursera/