Online Learning Update

By Mike Gouvion, the Royal Purple (UW-Whitewater)

UW-Whitewater students are enrolling in online courses largely because of the advancements in technology and flexible scheduling. According to Director of Admissions Jodi Hare there are more online courses offered this semester and more students enrolled in them. This semester, there are 110 online courses offered with 3,671 students, which is an increase of 15 courses and approximately 300 students. The College of Business and Economics offers an average of 50 online courses per year, with the majority of them being Master of Business Administration courses, Dean of the College of Business and Economics Christine Clements said. Debra Heiber, an advisor in the College of Letters and Sciences, said the college offers about 20 online courses and two complete online majors.

http://royalpurplenews.com/?p=311

by the Sloan Consortium

The call for papers for the 17th Annual Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning opens Monday, February 14th. The theme of this year’s conference is “Online Learning, Teaching, and Research in the New Media Ecology” It is clear that we are in the midst of rapid and ongoing changes in the way that we communicate and represent ideas and these changes have profound consequence for how we know, learn, think, and teach in higher education and beyond. The dizzying pace of change is highlighted by the fact that even the relatively new conventions of online education associated with asynchronous learning networks are being challenged by emerging means of access, such as mobile and cloud computing, new forms of communication, such as video streaming and instant messaging, as well as the innovative modes of participation represented in social media. The more than 5.5 million college students who study online are increasingly at the forefront of this rapidly evolving landscape and it is crucial that we gain a clear understanding of how to best leverage the new media ecology to support our students’ learning.

http://sloanconsortium.org/conferences/2011/aln/call_for_presentations

By Derek Thompson, the Atlantic

“We should focus on having at least one great course online for each subject rather than lots of mediocre courses,” Bill Gates wrote in his 2010 annual letter for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The appeal is obvious and nearly universal. At a time when states are looking to cut spending on higher ed, and aspiring students are looking for great deals on quality college education, a downloadable one-size-fits-all course on, say, psychology would replace the need for expensive instruction. So why isn’t Prof. Randall Stross nervous about being replaced by a piece of software?

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/02/whats-holding-back-online-courses-money-quality-or-inertia/70935/

by Neal Schaffer, B2C

With almost every business looking to embrace social, there should clearly be demand for education on it. Certainly there are enough case studies on social media, that can fill college textbooks with examples of best practices and spark discussion, internal project creation, and debate. And now we have academic books slowly being published on the subject, like the one recently published by my friend Beverly Macy “The Power of Real-Time Social Media Marketing,” that are beginning to put social in both an academic and corporate perspective. Where can professionals go, then, to take online courses in social media? Unfortunately, further research on the subject proved that there are very few options out there for professionals who want a degree or certification in social media marketing through online courses.

http://www.b2cmarketinginsider.com/social-media/social-media-online-courses-%E2%80%93-where-are-they-014117

By Natalie Houston, Chronicle of Higher Education

One of Julie’s early posts, Integrating, Evaluating, and Managing Blogging in the Classroom usefully highlights the pedagogical issues that instructors need to consider and explain to their students in order for blogging to be a successful element of the course design. Julie and Jeff cowrote an excellent discussion of different approaches to grading student blogs. Mark generously offers his grading rubric as an example and also describes using a blog audit as a way to get students to reflect upon their own blogging practice. Guest author Derek Bruff describes using blogs for pre-class quizzes and guest author Dave Parry describes why he prefers WordPress to a campus wide Learning Management System.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/from-the-archives-on-blogging/30589?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

By Tanya Roscorla, Converge

On university campuses, pairs of journalism students look for 10 items to complete their scavenger hunt, including school spirit, little-known facts and fanatic fans. They ask someone a question, snap a photo, and publish their quotes and photos on Twitter using class hashtags to organize their work.

http://www.convergemag.com/classtech/Twitter-Scavenger-Hunt.html

By Mini Swamy, TMCnet

Moodle, originally developed by Martin Dougiamas to help educators create online courses with a focus on interaction and collaborative construction of content, is an open source virtual learning environment that is attracting attention from schools all over the world. Ease of use and flexibility coupled with interactive tools make the process of learning rather enjoyable. It is often referred to as a Course Management System, Learning Management System, or Virtual Learning Environment. Science and math can perhaps be best taught using Moodle 2.0.

http://education.tmcnet.com/topics/education/articles/141660-virtual-learning-environment-moodle-helps-educators.htm

by Anna Tims, the Guardian

Your desk may overlook the desolate edge-of-town business park and the only lunch venue is the canteen, but look on the bright side: you could spend your meal break browsing a book from the New York public library, absorbing an Oxford University lecture on the fall of the Roman empire or taking a short course to enhance your mastery of Excel. Immobilised office workers can nowadays roam the intellectual world courtesy of the internet and can foster passions or update skills in brief, instant gobbets when their in-tray allows, instead of committing themselves to a strict academic timetable.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/feb/05/secret-to-e-learning

by Penn State University and the Sloan Consortium

IELOL is a unique blended-learning leadership development program sponsored by Penn State and the Sloan Consortium. This institute is designed to serve the leadership development needs of professionals in the rapidly expanding field of online learning. IELOL is a four-step leadership development program. The program begins with a two-week IELOL online experience (July 18–29) designed to identify and focus attention on key leadership challenges at the participants’ organizations. The second step is an on-site immersive experience at Penn State (August 8–11) that enables the IELOL participant to develop specific leadership skills, styles, networks, and strategies for the emerging leader. A three-week online follow-up program (September 19–October 7) provides senior-level mentoring and consulting for the participants as they apply the newly-acquired skills and concepts in their local settings. The program culminates with a preconference workshop (November 16) at the annual Sloan Consortium ALN conference in Orlando.

http://www.programs.psu.edu/IELOL11

Created by Gerry Bayne, EDUCAUSE Review

When Gardner Campbell and Jim Groom get together to discuss the current state of higher ed, it’s always an insightful and lively conversation. Gardner is Director of the Academy for Teaching and Learning at Baylor University and Jim Groom is an Instructional Technology Specialist at the University of Mary Washington. A couple years ago we caught the two on video debating EDUPUNK. This year we got them talking about the current state of higher ed faculty attitudes about teaching and the internet.

http://www.educause.edu/blog/gbayne/E10PodcastGardnerCampbellandJi/218571

by Sarah “Intellagirl” Smith-Robbins, Educause Review

Gamification. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s the new term invented to describe the application of game mechanics such as points, badges, and levels to non-game processes. Your first introduction to gamification may have been through a location-based check-in service like foursquare. Check in at the local Starbucks often enough and you get a Starbucks badge. Check in more than anyone else and you get to be mayor of your favorite local java joint. Though mobile devices and downloadable applications may have expanded the market for gamified systems, they’re nothing new. Accumulating airline miles, earning frequent-shopper discounts, and even increasing gas mileage through the use of the gas efficiency gauge on a hybrid car are all, somewhat, games. Gamification is an effort to gain points and status for completing tasks. It may be the new hot thing to marketers, but to those of us in academia, these systems should seem familiar.

http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume46/ThisGameSucksHowtoImprovetheGa/222665

by David J. Staley and Dennis A. Trinkle, Educause Review

The landscape of higher education—the growing variety of higher education institutions, the cultural environment, the competitive ecosystem—is changing rapidly and disruptively. The higher education landscape is metaphorically crossed with fault lines, those fissures in the landscape creating potential areas of dramatic change, and is as “seismic” as it has been in decades. Below we identify ten such fissures or fault lines in the larger landscape of higher education. Unlike the Horizon Report,1 which looks largely at technology trends, we are looking at a context and environment wider than IT departments. Indeed, most of the fissures noted below are not technological, although they encompass significant technical implications. Those of us in information services and information technology need to be aware of these larger changes and the impact they will have on college and university IT departments and on academic computing. Consider this article advanced warning of potentially tectonic change.

http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume46/TheChangingLandscapeofHigherEd/222643

By Ben Wieder, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Mobile devices are one year away from transforming education. For the third straight year. The 2011 Horizon Report, an annual look at technology trends affecting higher education, points to mobile devices as one of six technologies to watch. Of the other five trends, game-based learning and learning analytics—using data to track student progress—are new additions for 2011. The report, produced by the New Media Consortium and Educause, notes that mobile devices have been listed before, but it says that resistance by many schools continues to slow the full integration of mobile devices into higher education.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/6-top-tech-trends-on-the-horizon-for-education/29581?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

By Josh Fischman, Chronicle of Higher Ed

A new survey of nearly 40,000 scholars across the natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences shows that almost 90 percent of them believe open-access journals are good for the research community and the individual researcher. But charges for publishing and the perception that open-access journals are of lower quality than traditional publications deter scholars from the open-access route, according to the Study of Open Access Publishing report, by an international team of researchers.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/scholars-favor-open-access-journals-but-quality-and-fees-are-concerns-for-some/29555?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

by Kyle Liu of The Paly Voice

The Palo Alto High School special education department is working on an online resource called Class Notes for students which is designed to provide lecture notes for students with special disabilities or those who missed a lecture. Class Notes gives students the opportunity to read other students’ notes on a lesson. According to Heather Johanson, head of the special education department Heather Johanson, Class Notes is designed for students with auditory-processing disabilities who may have difficulties taking notes during lectures.

http://voice.paly.net/node/26057#

By Dekunle Somade, Daily Diamondback

Like many of the nearly 27,000 undergraduate students who attend this university, when I got wind of the expected snowstorms and potential school closings last week, I grew excited at the possibility of enjoying a day off from classes so early in the semester. Preparations for two separate parties and social functions were already in the works in the days leading up to the snow, as friends anticipated the inclement weather would in fact hit hard enough to warrant class cancellations. Fridges were stocked with beer, homework was left unfinished and large groups were organized to perform snow dance rituals to appease the snow gods who had proved to be merciful last year in an epic weeklong, campuswide shutdown, known to almost everyone as Snowpocalypse. But these preparations would be all for naught because a professor in one of my business classes announced during the first week of classes that he had launched the web conferencing tool Wimba Classrooms on Blackboard and that he would be conducting class via this communication tool “rain or shine.” Talk about a blow to the stomach.

http://www.diamondbackonline.com/opinion/technology-a-change-in-class-1.1962255

By Stacy Blackman, US News

Those interested in pursuing an M.B.A. have a lot of options: full-time or part-time programs, abbreviated courses designed specifically for executives, and joint degrees with other academic disciplines, to name a few. In the past decade, another option has emerged and continues to gain popularity: online M.B.A. degrees. While the quality of online M.B.A. degrees left much to be desired during their early days, their attributes have steadily improved over the past few years, as have their pedigrees. The University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School made headlines recently when it announced the launch of a two-year online M.B.A. program. Other highly ranked programs allowing students to complete degrees online include Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business and Spain’s IE Business School. As the demand continues to grow for such programs, it’s possible to imagine future M.B.A. students obtaining Harvard Business School degrees without once setting foot in Cambridge.

http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/MBA-admissions-strictly-business/2011/02/04/the-lowdown-on-the-online-mba.html

by: Gwen Siewert, KIMT

Hate going to school at 7 am? Would you rather just go in your pajamas and never have to leave home? That’s a very real statement for hundreds of Minnesota high schoolers who are getting their diplomas online. That’s not a quite a reality in Iowa yet, But as KIMT News 3’s Gwen Siewert is finding out there’s a lot that goes into the equation of finding out if online school is right for you. There are 24 online schools in the gopher state. Most are regulated by the department of education and get state funding. So why isn’t Iowa getting in on online education? If your student can succeed without bells telling them when to move classrooms, it may be something parents can soon explore.

http://www.kimt.com/content/localnews/story/Education-Without-the-Classroom/gdwwUts2QUWQ4ljWgKy4AA.cspx

By Tanya Roscorla, Converge

In Michigan Center School District, Dan Spencer teaches high school chemistry students both in and out of the classroom. Instead of lecturing during class, he creates screencasts, which include narration and digital recordings of the PowerPoint presentations on his computer screen. His students watch the screencasts — also called vodcasts — at home and work on assignments at Michigan Center High School.

http://www.convergemag.com/classtech/science-podcasts.html

By Joanna Nolasco, Seattle Times

State lawmakers are considering a plan that would expand a nonprofit online university in Washington as a way to increase access to higher education. The proposal, sponsored by Sen. Jim Kastama, D-Puyallup, would create a partnership between the state and the Western Governors University (WGU), based in Utah. The university would establish an online school called WGU-Washington, and would work with the state in helping meet statewide higher-education goals, such as increasing the number of students earning college degrees. The school also would be included in agreements for the transfer of college credits among Washington institutions.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2014151167_onlineschool07m.html

by Alli Collis, The Trail Blazer

MSU at Ashland closed due to weather. MSU at Prestonsburg closed due to weather. MSU Jackson closed due to weather. The e2campus texts and email alerts seem never ending when winter weather appears. But despite all these cancellations at regional campuses each winter, administrators say students and faculty are able to stay up to date and and on schedule with classes. Brent Jones, executive director of distance education and regional campuses, said professors and students are aware of winter weather and the possibility of closings at regional campuses, and they are prepared to continue with classes in different ways when closings occur. Along with the videos, each class at the regional campuses has a Blackboard site and a contingency plan for moving the class into an online environment for a short period of time when necessary. When closings occur students and faculty are able to communicate with each other through email and the Blackboard site.

http://www.trailblazeronline.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2212:classes-not-cancelled&catid=53:life-and-arts&Itemid=72