Online Learning Update

By Jodi S. Cohen, Chicago Tribune

The University of Illinois will offer seven free online courses this fall, giving students around the world a chance to sample an education that costs thousands of dollars in tuition on campus. By teaming up with Coursera, one of several new online education companies, the university will dip a toe into a fast-growing trend in higher education to offer free courses to an unlimited number of students. It’s a low-risk venture compared with the U. of I.’s failed and expensive Global Campus online initiative from several years ago. The Urbana-Champaign campus is one of a dozen universities that on Tuesday plan to announce partnerships with California-based Coursera, joining Princeton University, Stanford University, the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania, which joined earlier this year.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/education/ct-met-u-of-i-online-0717-20120717,0,72285.story

By Kathryn Turner, Summit Daily News

For 16-year-old Breckenridge resident Kaitlynn Sockett, participating in high school via online classes makes sense. The teenager is a competitive skier, and the format allows her time to practice in Summit County, as well travel to Europe to compete. “I was going to school over in Vail, and the traveling didn’t give me the time to train that I needed,” she said. Sockett, who is going into her junior year, attends the Colorado Connections Academy, a tuition-free, fully accredited virtual public school. The school is available to students in grades K-12 who reside anywhere in Colorado.

http://www.summitdaily.com/article/20120710/NEWS/120709820/1078&ParentProfile=1055

By John Thelin, Inside Higher Ed

Online education is neither simple nor sinister: I am not so much low tech as slow tech — and found that being ready to teach an online course takes a long time. But the time lapse falls into two markedly different phases. To convert a graduate course I had taught in “traditional mode” for many years, last September I sought out my campus’s director of distance learning programs offered by the university library and met with her and the DL staff for a long series of work sessions and carefully monitored progress reports. At each juncture the DL staff patiently yet firmly showed me why and how it was important to understand the logic and logistics of course preparation and presentation. One had to have course materials – including syllabus, weekly content, discussion topics, assignments, and links to materials – clearly in place before starting to teach. What I found was that the more one learned about the format and understood the strengths and limits of the online technology, the more interesting and effective teaching and learning would be.

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/07/10/professors-shouldnt-be-afraid-online-learning-essay

by Mark McGraw, HR Online

Indeed, companies that learn to embrace mobile technology as a viable learning platform will ultimately be rewarded with a more engaged and productive workforce says Justin Brusino, learning technology community of practice manager with the Alexandria, Va.-based ASTD. “People use their mobile devices as learning and support tools all the time. They look up information, they access apps and tools to help them do or perform a task,” he says. “Mobile learning is happening outside the workplace, and organizations that integrate mobile learning are really empowering their employees to work and perform better.”

http://www.hreonline.com/HRE/story.jsp?storyId=533349016

by Terry Heick, Edudemic

Online learning is changing the world. Between not-for-profits like the Khan Academy, to MITx and other higher-ed digital platforms, it is difficult to match the incredible access provided by online learning. It is one thing to issue some kind of a course and a certificate; it is another to be able to fire up your iPad and access what you can trust is a rigorous, high-level learning experience. While online learning may lack the quality control that attempts to monitor and improve brick-and-mortar formal learning environments, there are some factors you can look for as markers of a better online learning experience.

http://edudemic.com/2012/07/stizzil-online-learning/

by Joe McKendrick, Smart Planet

While it’s unclear how impressed employers will be by online certificates, the NPR report observes that these online courses may work well for upgrading specific skills in demand, such computer programming and quality control. Wharton’s report cites a projection from Global Industry Analysts that the global e-learning market will reach $107 billion by 2015. as mentioned above, much of this income will come from ancillary services — a fremium model if you will — that offer certificates, transcripts, and career placement. Eventually, donations from online alumni may also make a difference. There is also financial support from foundations that can be counted on. For example, MIT just announced it has received a $1 million grant from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to go towards developing an introduction to computer science course and partnering with a postsecondary institution that targets low-income young adults to offer this introductory course in a “flipped classroom” setting.

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/business-brains/-8216ivy-league-spring-debated-is-free-online-education-financially-viable/25157

By: AARON RICHARDSON, The Daily Progress

Online education has come to the fore as an item of discussion at the University of Virginia since last month’s failed attempt to oust President Teresa A. Sullivan. In her remarks, Dragas said higher education could be on the brink of an online learning revolution, now that “the elite institutions” have legitimized it. In emails between Dragas and former Vice Rector Mark Kington released recently, the two discuss a New York Times editorial by David Brooks that hails online courses by companies such as UDACITY, often referred to as “MOOCs,” or massive open online courses, as a tidal wave about to hit higher education. UVa engineering professor Larry G. Richards said the university has been teaching distance and online courses since 1983, offering courses first through the engineering school and later through the Curry School of Education.

http://www2.dailyprogress.com/news/2012/jul/07/after-sullivans-failed-ouster-question-uvas-future-ar-2040959/

By Tyler Greer, UAB

To meet the needs of the students, UAB began offering its first fully online Bachelor of Science in Accounting program this summer. It is the first online degree offered by the School of Business. The Master of Accounting degree will be offered online beginning this fall. Both degree programs are accepting applications now. “Our online programs are a positive step in providing flexible access to highly valued, rigorous accounting education,” says David Klock, Ph.D., dean of the UAB School of Business.

http://www.uab.edu/news/reporter/people/item/2571-business-now-offers-fully-online-accounting-degrees

by Virtual College (UK)

Investing in tools to enable distance learning online has been said to enable the world to unlock sustainable growth, while simultaneously dealing with an international crisis in education. A blog in the Guardian, written by the United Nations’ Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (Unesco) US ambassador David Killion and its assistant director-general for education Sir John Daniel, suggested that Open Educational Resources (OERs) could have a number of benefits for a huge range of countries. It defined these as academic materials that can be altered, used and accessed by anyone from anywhere in the world. If governments could seize on the potential of these online learning tools, they could realise “tremendous” advantages, the authors declared.

http://www.virtual-college.co.uk/news/Investing-in-distance-learning-online-important-for-global-economy-newsitems-801402340.aspx

By Tom Still, WisOpinion

The University of Wisconsin System was a bit late to the digital education party, but at least it’s not a no-show. The UW System is moving toward a “flexible degree” program built on flat-fee, at-your-own-pace online education, news that should be applauded by prospective students, business owners and state legislators. That’s true even if some elements of the education community itself remain suspicious of how well it will work. While the UW is a relative latecomer to granting flexible online degrees, it already offers 4,600 online courses. It also has a huge advantage not possessed by most of its competitors – a quality brand that can be marketed well beyond the state’s borders. UW System President Kevin Reilly and UW-Extension Chancellor Ray Cross were joined by Gov. Scott Walker last month in announcing the “flexible degree” program, which will be rolled out over the next year or so. Skeptics quickly asked if the program will undercut the UW’s traditional campuses, how the tuition structure will work, whether quality can be upheld and how to guard against academic cyber-cheaters.

http://www.wisopinion.com/index.iml?mdl=article.mdl&article=43426

by JACK HIDARY,  Huffington Post

New online learning models are bursting from startups and top universities, bridging the educational divide. We are in the midst of a revolution that will bring high-quality education to hundreds of millions of people who have never had access to this level of learning before. These tools will reach those in developing cities and countries but also foment a revolution in the U.S. classroom as they change our perception of what learning can be. Here are the leading new platfoms disupting the education world.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jack-hidary/online-distance-learning_b_1493319.html

By Craig Savage, the Conversation (Australia)

Universities are traditionally seen as exclusive institutions for the few, not the many. But that is changing as a new wave of online courses throws open the doors of academia to all. Led by world renowned American institutions like MIT and Harvard, this push to democratise learning is being taken up in Australia too. In contrast to traditional higher education, which closes learning off from the world, open learning is transparent and accessible to anyone with internet access. Such openness could do a lot to improve standards at universities whose business models are driven by bums on seats, rather than mastery of a given subject. It might also lift the morale of academia. Academics who are in control of what they teach, and who teach students who seek them out, may regain their professional freedom.

http://theconversation.edu.au/digital-dawn-open-online-learning-is-just-beginning-7758

byAudrey Watters, Inside Higher Ed

A number of initiatives and startups are hoping to offers ways to give people some sort of formal(ized) recognition for their informal learning – or at least for the skills they possess for which they don’t have official diplomas or degrees. Among them: Mozilla’s Open Badges project, the social endorsement site Skills.to, the soon-to-launch Degreed, and the open-to-the-public-just-today LearningJar. There seems to be a lot of buzz about these in the tech industry in particular — due to the high demand for workers with programming skills, due to the feeling that a college degree in CS doesn’t always mean someone has those necessary programming skills, and — of course — due to the concerns over the high cost of higher education. And even if there weren’t headlines and hand-wringing about the “higher education bubble,” these efforts do make sense: a college degree isn’t necessarily the best or only indicator of a person’s skill-set.

http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/hack-higher-education/who-will-benefit-badges-and-other-new-forms-credentialing

By: Tom Mix, The Dickinson Press

The heat wave the region experienced this week left many seeking refuge in pools, lakes and air-conditioned buildings. Beating the heat was the main objective, and that also is the goal of the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS). The warmer temperatures have provided the NFHS a time-relevant platform to promote its new online course titled, “A Guide to Heat Acclimation and Heat Illness Prevention.” The course, which is free for coaches, trainers and school staff members to watch, provides information designed to minimize the risk of activity-related heat stroke among high school athletes.

http://www.thedickinsonpress.com/event/article/id/59564/

by William J. Bennett, CNN

Thrun says Udacity has already partnered with more than 20 companies who verify and accept the certificates of course completion. Some are already hiring graduates of Udacity courses. Thrun is also working with other companies to design and tailor classes to specific needs in the work force. Soon, Udacity will be launching in-person testing centers to verify a student’s knowledge and skills. Udacity is simultaneously meeting the educational needs of the public and the vocational requirements of the labor force directly and efficiently, more so than we can say of many universities and colleges. I asked Thrun whether his enterprise and others like it will be the end of higher education as we know it — exclusive enclaves for a limited number of students at high tuitions? “I think it’s the beginning of higher education,” Thrun replied. “It’s the beginning of higher education for everybody.”

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/05/opinion/bennett-udacity-education/index.html

By Tanya Roscorla, Converge

Universities such as Indiana University have been working on bringing textbook costs down for a while. And individual professors have some ideas about how to make textbooks less expensive, but more relevant to students. In interviews, several current and former university professors sound off on the problems with textbooks of all forms and share ways to address the problem.

http://www.convergemag.com/classtech/How-Professors-Would-Fix-Textbooks.html

by India Education Diary

With the innovative use of technology, Open and Distance Learning (ODL) system has achieved flexibility in time, space, pace, medium, access and content. While delivering the 17th G. Ram Reddy Memorial Lecture on the topic ‘Education in the 21st Century-Toward Virtual Universities and Technology Enabled Learning’ at IGNOU Convention Centre, Prof. D.N. Reddy, Chairman, Recruitment and Assessment Centre, Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO), Ministry of Defense. He emphasised on UNESCO’s argument that it was virtually impossible to build the number of traditional post-secondary institutions to keep up with the increase in demand. The debate that the traditional universities represent a tremendous ongoing financial commitment when physical campuses classrooms need to be built, maintained, heated, cooled and secured is on.

http://www.indiaeducationdiary.in/showEE.asp?newsid=13924

BY: JULIE HARE, The Australian

Jan Thomas, vice chancellor of USQ, says the race is on to find new educational paradigms. The building momentum behind free online higher education has been given another shot in the arm after UNESCO announced it will ask governments worldwide to commit to developing, promoting and making available open educational resources. Meanwhile, two Australian universities are going through the final planning phases before the prototype of a free online learning platform aimed at disadvantaged people particularly in developing nations is given its first test run. The University of Southern Queensland and Wollongong University are among 15 institutions which will contribute courses to the Open Education Resource University, which is being run by WikiEducator.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/online-and-free-the-real-education-revolution-accelerates/story-e6frgcjx-1226414895200

by Virtual College, UK

Online learning courses are beginning to make an impact in liberal arts colleges across the US, an education reporter has said. Writing for Inside Higher Ed, Steve Kolowich noted a number of “top-rated” institutions of this type have begun to investigate e-learning. Traditional universities are familiar with this innovation, he stated, pointing out academia in these buildings was previously imparted through the hosting of lectures in large halls, with this education method easily transferring to the internet. Conversely, the expert explained liberal arts colleges usually had the appeal of “small classes and regular face-time with professors”. These instructors are now examining online training courses that educate students in concepts by using “artificially intelligent tutoring software” in lieu of human lecturers or static textbooks, Mr Kolowich declared.

http://www.virtual-college.co.uk/news/Liberal-arts-colleges-experimenting-with-elearning-newsitems-801399494.aspx

By Liau Yun Qing, ZDNet

Proliferation of mobile devices in Asia driving businesses in region to customize more flexible ways of distributing learning content online to users, say market players. Companies in Asia have started to “seriously” adopt online learning in the last three years and many are focusing on customizing distance learning content for mobile devices, say e-learning service providers. WeejeeLearning’s Huckabee added that next-generation learning management systems allow learning and development departments to manage their users’ learning path, monitor performance and drive discussion while leveraging commonly used social tools.

http://www.zdnet.com/e-learning-going-mobile-in-asia-7000000191/