Online Learning Update

by Real Online Degrees

Like it or not, today’s students are moving away from traditional textbook learning and gravitating toward media-based instruction instead. In fact, educators from all levels of education are taking notice, particularly two-year colleges, universities, and graduate schools. Colleges and universities are preparing for a new generation of technologically savvy learners by tuning in to the learning styles of the current generation. Larry D. Rosen, Ph.D., author of Rewired: Understanding the iGeneration and How They Learn, states that the iGeneration is currently in the K-12 system, and we need to tap into how they learn so that colleges can keep pace with their learning styles.

http://www.realonlinedegrees.com/a-new-generation-of-distance-learners_2010-05-24/

By Yasmin Anwar, UC Berkeley

Enrollment in summer school at the University of California, Berkeley, is shaping up to be a record-breaker. At least 1,000 more students are enrolled today than were at this time last year. Meanwhile 1,400 students have signed up for online courses, a 50 percent increase over last year. Reading and composition, business, science and math classes attract the most students. Popular online courses this year include “The Planets,” which has 100 students enrolled; “Statistics,” with 400 enrolled and a wait list; and a molecular and cell biology class called “The Brain, Mind and Behavior.”

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2010/05/24_summersessions.shtml

by Betty Cheng, Brandeis Justice

Stanford University offers online classes at the graduate level. Some departments allow fully online degree programs, while others have a few on-campus requirements. The requirements for the degree are determined by the department. The online classes are regular university classes where the lectures have been videotaped and streamed over the Internet. The rest of the materials are delivered to the remote student via any number of suitable means. The remote student is required to do the same work and must complete all assignments and exams at the same time as the rest of the class. In essence, the major classroom difference between on-campus students and remote students is the method of delivery for the lectures.

http://media.www.thejusticeonline.com/media/storage/paper573/news/2010/05/25/ReaderCommentary/Reader.Commentary-3920637.shtml

by Kevin YEE and Jace HARGIS, TOJDE

 The Internet sensation YouTube (http://www.youtube.com) has become such a force online that it was estimated in 2006 to account for a full tenth of the bandwidth by the entire Internet in the United States (WebProNews, 2007), and to use as much bandwidth in 2007 as the entire Internet had done in 2000 (Carter, 2008). Like many technological tools created with entertainment or profit in mind, YouTube can now be easily and usefully adopted by instructors for educational purposes, and indeed many professors use YouTube in their classroom teaching already (Brooks, 2000). This is especially true for passive uses of YouTube; watching videos that are already online and using them in the classroom experience to support a concept and provide another mechanism for students to connect with the topics.

http://tojde.anadolu.edu.tr/tojde38/notes_for_editor/notes_for_editor_1.htm

by James Kelly, the Missoulian

By now, parents are accustomed to the sight of their kids parked at the computer, uploading YouTube videos, plugging rounds into their enemies in virtual war games, and Skype-dialing friends across the country. But what if they fired up their Mac or Dell to master the quadratic equation, brush up on the conjugation of Spanish verbs or learn the atomic mass of beryllium? And what if it meant they didn’t have to set one foot in school? That’s not the distant future. That’s next year, and it’s coming to a broadband connection near you. The Montana Digital Academy is taking education – everything from gym class to advanced physics – online.

http://missoulian.com/news/local/article_ca28a732-66eb-11df-b8df-001cc4c002e0.html

By Shelley Widhalm, Loveland Reporter-Herald

Whether you live in Loveland or Sterling, Grand Junction or Colorado Springs, Colorado Christian University is offering a new type of nursing program that combines online learning courses with classroom studies. The program is geared toward working adults who want to earn a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. “We’re offering a unique program,” said Diann DeWitt, nursing professor and program director at the college. “We want it to be for working adults who want to maintain a job and obtain the B.S.N. degree.” Students — the program will accept 48 annually — will study nursing through a mix of online learning, satellite classrooms and health facilities across the state.

http://www.reporterherald.com/news_story.asp?ID=28203

By Paul Fain, Chronicle of Higher Ed

UMass at Lowell turns a $10-million profit, and SUNY at Delhi attracts nursing students. For-profit colleges are facing increasingly stiff online competition from regional public universities. Those revenue-hungry campuses are using the degree programs to attract both local students and those hailing from beyond state and national borders. The University of Massachusetts at Lowell got into the game early, with deep distance-education programs that the university began 13 years ago. A more recent entrant is the State University of New York’s Delhi campus which is attracting nursing students.

http://chronicle.com/article/2-Regional-Public-Universities/65657/

by David Moltz, Inside Higher Ed

Last fall, the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office announced what some perceived as a partial solution to the budget-related enrollment restrictions that threatened to disrupt the educational plans of many students. Under a memorandum of understanding with Kaplan University, students at certain community colleges would be able to take specific online learning courses – at a steep discount off the for-profit institution’s normal tuition rates, though still paying significantly more than they would at their own college – with the assurance that the credits would transfer back to their home institutions, allowing them to stay on track to earn an associate degree.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/05/26/kaplan

By Dennis Carter, eCampus News

From public relations in social media to the potential marketing power of “mommy bloggers,” colleges and universities are offering graduate-level certificates focusing on the business side of Twitter, Facebook, and a host of other sites that draw Americans from every demographic. Social media courses have sprung up on college campuses as social media web sites—once seen as a virtual playground for bored college students—have become central to marketing campaigns, branding items, and communication with customers, group members, and alumni, for example.

Colleges click the ‘like’ button on social media classes

BY Eli Amdur, the Record

With national unemployment at 9.9 percent, for those without a high school diploma it is 14.7; with a high school diploma, 10.6; with some college or an associate’s degree, 8.3; and with a bachelor’s degree, 4.9. Online learning represents the fastest-growing segment of enrollment in American colleges. Self-paced and self-directed, distance learning is powerful, useful, practical and efficient, and it supports the lifestyle demands of today’s workers, many of whom are non-traditional college students (not straight out of high school).

http://bit.ly/9Ab4Kh

By Arizona State University

Students interested in pursuing a degree in psychology may earn a Bachelor of Arts degree entirely online through Arizona State University’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. The new online degree program, which begins classes this fall, offers the same academic rigor as the program offered through face-to-face classes on ASU’s West campus. “Unlike online offerings from other schools that involve ‘facilitated’ instruction by part-time instructors, courses in our program are taught by full-time faculty members who are experts in their field and who have been directly involved in developing the course material,” said Barbara Tinsley, professor of psychology in New College’s Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences and director of the online degree program.

http://asunews.asu.edu/20100521_psychologyonline

By Michelle Spitzer, Florida Today

Brevard Community College created two new provost positions to accommodate its expanding online learning program and an expected bump in demand from laid off shuttle workers looking to be retrained. Katherine Cobb, who has been the Melbourne provost for about two years, was named eBrevard campus provost. Mildred Coyne, executive dean of workforce development, will be the workforce training and development provost. Both women will make $128,750, the same salary as the school’s four other provosts.

http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20100522/NEWS01/5220316/1006/BCC+gets+provosts+for+online+study

By Scott Ijaz, U Weekly

Top tier schools like The London School of Economics, MIT and Yale embrace the advent of self-educational websites through Open Course Software. Open Course Software streams recorded lectures from the classroom into the audience’s room. The Internet viewer who doesn’t drop a dime experiences the same explanations as the students in the classroom who pay high-end tuition dollars. Nathan Shubick, a second year student studying physics, better comprehended the online explanation than the classroom’s. “I went to the oyc.yale.edu, and listened to one of their teachers explain the same material on a podcast,” remarked Shubick. Shubick favored the Internet source over his classroom teacher. “Turns out, the Yale professor authored the textbook which my university teacher refers to in class. It was easier to learn coming from the horse’s mouth,” he said.

http://uweekly.com/newsmag/05-19-2010/14592/are-teachers-becoming-obsolete

By KENYA WOODARD, News-Journal

Stephanie Bettis, 18, has never passed a note in class, eaten lunch with friends in the cafeteria or listened to a teacher lecture. For Bettis, the classroom is wherever her laptop is located. Bettis, a senior, has been home-schooled for much of her education. Her father’s job as a business consultant kept the family on the move. The Bettises permanently settled in Bunnell in 1997. She plans to attend Stetson University to study marine biology where she wants to become an expert on sharks.

http://www.news-journalonline.com/news/local/flagler/2010/05/20/online-schooling-pays-off-in-grades-college-scholarship.html

By Catrice Stanley, Portland State University Vanguard

As the pilot term of hybrid classes comes to an end this June, many are now assessing how successful they are. Instructional designer Michael Chamberlain has helped with the hybrid transformation for nearly six months, and even participated in mid-term teacher meetings to gain insight into the first experiences with hybrid classes at Portland State. According to Chamberlain, the feedback for PSU’s pilot hybrid courses has been “quite positive.”

http://www.dailyvanguard.com/hybrid-courses-will-return-1.2267710

by KCTV 5

Imagine a classroom without walls where students can attend classes 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It’s happening in Kansas and the idea is growing. Virtually thousands of Kansas students are learning online by opening their laptops and signing in with a username and password. It’s an alternative way of learning that’s catching on in Kansas, which was one of the first states to pioneer the system 10 years ago.

http://www.kctv5.com/education/23596797/detail.html

Dan Holly, Raleigh City Examiner

They are among more than 1,900 undergraduate students aged 25 and older enrolled this spring at N.C. State, up from about 1,500 last spring, according to university planners. That’s an increase from 7.1 percent to 9 percent of total undergraduate enrollment. The trend is nationwide. N.C. State does try to accommodate nontraditional students through distance learning, which offers courses online, according to Melissa Williford, who heads the program. The distance learning program offers all courses online.

http://www.examiner.com/x-13755-Raleigh-City-Buzz-Examiner~y2010m5d18-Older-students-returning-to-college-find-surprising-acceptance-but–challenges-too

by Anya Kamenetz, Huffington Post

The reality today is that students with the fewest resources are at the institutions with the fewest resources, and that those who are accessing online-only educational programs are doing so largely because they have to work while they go to school. If people who care about both quality and equality in higher education don’t get deeply involved in the use of technology to stretch the resources we have in order to educate everyone to the best of our ability and their abilities, then the future will be shaped by people with worse motives and visions.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anya-kamenetz/online-education-and-the_b_580769.html

by IMS

The Learning Impact Awards (LIAs) recognize use of technology to improve learning across all industry segments and in all regions of the world. Twenty-seven finalists recently exhibited and were evaluated by an expert panel at the IMS annual Learning Impact conference. The LIA awards are unique in that they recognize the use of technology in context.

Award winners included the Gold Award for going to Epigeum and Durham University. Epigeum just announced the release of their US edition of Learning Technologies.  This series of seven high-quality programs includes North American online learning leaders Larry Ragan, Caroline Haythornthwaite, and Terry Anderson. This American -release version was edited by Ray Schroeder.  It provides a rich resource for faculty development in the area of online and blended teaching techniques and technologies. 

http://www.imsglobal.org/pressreleases/IMSPR-LIA2010Winners.pdf

by eLearners.com

eLearners.com, a web resource of EducationDynamics, which connects prospective students with online degrees, unveiled today the eLearners’ Research Center, the most comprehensive compilation of data on online education, distance learning and adult students in one location. The Research Center is designed to make fact-finding easy with the ability to search by topic and source. Many of the answers include graphs that clearly display the research findings. “It’s hard to keep your finger on the pulse of the latest research, with new studies released frequently, so we decided to become the workhorse for journalists and others researching the industry by compiling real-time data in one place,” said Helen MacDermott, Content Director for eLearners.com.

http://bit.ly/aYH49E

by Arizona State University

Arizona State University has expanded its offerings of affordable online degree and certification programs for pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers. Beginning in the fall 2010 semester, six programs will be available fully online to assist current and aspiring teachers in reaching new levels of educational excellence.

http://asunews.asu.edu/20100517_onlineprograms