Online Learning Update

by Innovative Educator

College grads are having a hard time getting jobs these days. Anthony Cody recently explained to us that the failure of schools is not that they are not teaching students to become skilled workers, but instead it is not giving them enough experience with doing things in the world. Employers don’t want to hire people who learn the theory behind or are “trained” to do things. They want people that have actually done things. Students are waking up and realizing that in many cases the traditional four year “college experience” doesn’t set them apart from the rest and provides few guarantees for employment related to their degree upon graduation.

http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2012/06/four-reasons-to-consider-non.html

by UNC News Service

The online program MBA@UNC will now be open to master of business administration alumni of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler Business School. Launched in July 2011, MBA@UNC is designed for working professionals who want to earn their MBA from a top-ranked business school and value the flexibility of an online program. “As we celebrate the first year of MBA@UNC, we welcome our MBA alumni back to school, from anywhere they are working around the globe, ” said Doug Shackelford, MBA@UNC associate dean. “Now they can remain lifelong students even if they can’t come to Chapel Hill.” Alumni of any Kenan-Flagler MBA program can register for any MBA@UNC course being offered during the quarter, starting this summer for classes that begin in October and end in December. They will attend classes along with current students and do all of the work – readings, projects and exams.

http://www.heraldsun.com/view/full_story/19180761/article-Kenan-Flagler-opens-MBA-UNC-online-courses

by Online Courses

It’s been more than a decade since MIT shook the education world to its core by announcing it would publish most of its course materials to the Internet for free usage by anyone and everyone in the world. Today there is almost no limit to what a person with an Internet connection can learn. Although hard data is scarce because the environment is still developing, there are many personal stories surfacing of people whose lives have been changed for the better thanks to open education.

http://www.onlinecollegecourses.com/2012/07/02/10-real-life-open-education-success-stories/

by David Handlos, Get Educated

Given the exponential growth of online learning over the last decade, I’m surprised to find people who still believe that online education must be less effective than “traditional” classroom methods. As an online student, I have to say nothing could be further from the truth. Online learning can be just as challenging – maybe even more so – than conventional classroom learning. There are also several benefits of online learning that will help you acquire valuable career skills that you won’t get from any textbook. These 4 beneficial skills are essential to success in the workforce; they’re also skills that traditional classroom students often won’t develop until after they’ve graduated – if ever.

http://www.geteducated.com/elearning-education-blog/benefits-of-online-learning/

by Stephen Hoare, The Guardian

Employers and universities have been putting their heads together. Recently the Higher Education Academy reported on the outcomes of eight flexible learning pathfinder projects, funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, which found that employers favoured distance learning as a way of delivering career-related study. Such distance-learning degrees, which are often designed to appeal to mid-career professionals looking to develop their roles in specific sectors, such as banking, law, finance and nursing, are a growth area for many universities.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jul/03/online-degrees-employers

by Angela Goldman, Blackboard Blogs

One of the most prevalent trends in higher education today is the increasing popularity of online classes. Today, about 30% of all higher education students take at least one class online, and demand for online courses exceeds demand for traditional courses across all institution types. But online learning isn’t something to be taken for granted. When moving their classes online, instructors need to account for the absence of face-to-face interactions while integrating tools from an array of digital learning technologies. This presents a unique set of challenges, especially for classes that require a high level of interaction with the professor or those that are asynchronous in the online environment.

http://blog.blackboard.com/professional-education/tips-for-taking-your-brick-and-mortar-class-to-an-online-environment/

by Walter Frick, BostInno

Make the case that universities are threatened by the rise of free online education (as I have) and you’ll quickly hear a laundry list of the extra benefits that make a university education superior. But what you’re really hearing is the death knell of the traditional university model. The term “disruptive innovation” is thrown around a lot these days, including in the context of education, but I’ve been thinking more lately about what it really means, having recently read a profile of HBS legend Clay Christensen as well as heard him talk at TEDx Boston. In Christensen’s model of disruptive innovation (he coined the term) the response but a university education is still better is just what you’d expect to hear. According to Christensen, innovators typically start out in the lower end of the market, making cheaper, lower quality products for consumers previously excluded from the incumbents’ products. As the innovators slowly creep up the market, the incumbents retreat to the high end, a process that continues until the incumbents are displaced.

http://bostinno.com/2012/07/01/online-ed-isnt-as-good-as-a-degree-but-universities-are-still-in-trouble/

by April Joyner, Inc. Magazine

2tor partners with Georgetown, UNC-Chapel Hill, and USC to offer online degrees that match their on-campus counterparts in graduation and job placement rates. Though online universities have opened access to higher education, they have taken knocks for subpar academic quality. Jeremy Johnson, co-founder and chief marketing officer of online education startup 2tor, wants to reverse that. Ironically, Johnson, 28, is a college dropout. As a junior at Princeton, he founded Zandigo, a social network where high school students could find information on college admissions. It was acquired by Zinch in 2007. While mulling over the decision to work on Zandigo full-time, he contacted John Katzman, the founder of the Princeton Review. Despite going against Katzman’s advice to finish college, Johnson kept in touch, often exchanging ideas to improve higher education. Katzman brought Chip Paucek, the former CEO of Hooked on Phonics, into the discussion, and the three started 2tor in 2008.

http://www.inc.com/30under30/april-joyner/jeremy-johnson-founder-of-2tor.html

by Christopher Barth, Infoneer

“What’s happening with these open online courses isn’t about cost cutting,” says Mr. Siemens, associate director of Athabasca University’s Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute, in Canada. “It’s about staying relevant.” Mr. Siemens likens the Harvard-MIT project, known as edX, to Google’s decision to develop a cellphone. At first the Android was not a worthy competitor of the iPhone, he says, but rather an attempt by Google to get a foothold in the cellphone market before Apple completely gobbled it up.

http://pulse.infoneer.net/post/26341260832/whats-happening-with-these-open-online-courses

by LINDSEY KLEIN, Hartford Business Journal

Connecticut colleges are modifying their programs to better serve professional populations as businesses are increasingly viewing online higher education as a highly valuable tool for their employees.  It provides a way for employees to build on existing skills while developing new ones, and gives them a chance to immediately apply what they’re learning to solve real business challenges,” said Frank Mulgrew, president of Post University’s Online Education Institute. “By necessity, we all have to become lifelong learners, and online higher education makes it possible for working professionals to get advanced education without interruption to their careers.”

http://www.hartfordbusiness.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120702/PRINTEDITION/306299971

by LifeHacker

Google’s search options are arguably some of the most powerful and flexible available, and they’re sure to take you to the results you’re looking for—assuming you know how to get the most out of Google Search. If your Google-fu could use a little brushing up, sign up for Power Searching with Google, a free online course being offered by Google’s search division. It’s guaranteed to boost your searching skills. The Power Searching with Google class starts on July 10th, and you can sign up with your Google Account. The course will consist of six 50 minute classes that you can take in your own time over a two week window, along with other students from all over the world. The course will consist of some traditional exercises, some interactive searching, Google+ Hangouts on Air, and Google Groups, where you can talk to other participants, and even members of the Google Search team to boost your search skills and get hints if you get stuck with a particular challenge.

[ed note: thanks to Emily for the question:  is this the beginning of Google offering open online learning classes with certificates?]

http://lifehacker.com/5922804/sign-up-for-googles-power-searching-online-course-to-boost-your-google+fu

by Lauren Landry, BostInno

We’ve been talking a lot about online education. Could the Internet help replace traditional learning? Are universities in trouble? Will employers ever take online learning seriously? Despite dropping names while answering those questions, however, we’ve yet to answer one overarching curiosity: Where can you go to even take these free, online classes? And thankfully, we now have you covered there, too, with at least eight different options no matter your age.

http://bostinno.com/2012/07/02/8-online-platforms-to-help-you-further-your-education-for-free/

by NC Now News

SUNY Canton’s summer session has broken enrollment records for the fifth consecutive year. Almost 1,800 students have enrolled this summer, and one more session is yet to begin. Total enrollment is up more than 20 percent from last year’s summer session, which broke the previous year’s records with 1,400 enrollments. “Almost 150 of our 170 summer session courses are being offered through SUNY Canton OnLine, allowing students to enroll from anywhere,” said Kyle Brown, SUNY Canton’s director of online learning and information services. “We’ve seen a surge of students enroll from other colleges around the country and even internationally.”

http://northcountrynow.com/news/another-suny-canton-record-broken-summer-enrollment-060824

by David Glance, the Conversation

I have just enrolled in a university course called Introduction to Sociology taught out of Princeton University. It is the same course that is given to the students at Princeton except that for myself and 30,000 others enrolled in the course, it is free. This course is one of about 50 or so other courses anyone can enrol in on a site called Coursera. The courses come from academics at Princeton University, Stanford University, University of Michigan, University of California Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania. And for the moment, they are all free. Not to be outdone, Harvard University and MIT have announced their own version of Coursera called edX. They plan to offer a range of courses in the third quarter of 2012.

http://theconversation.edu.au/will-free-online-courseware-from-the-us-mean-the-end-of-most-universities-elsewhere-8016

By LISA ERMAK, Holland Sentinel

Online learning classrooms are rapidly gaining popularity at area colleges. The number of Grand Rapids Community College students taking online courses grew 13 percent for the summer semester and in an effort to keep up with the demand for online classes, the school has opened up 40 new courses slated to go online next year. Hope College and Grand Valley State University have also seen enrollment in online courses grow. The number of students choosing to enroll in online and hybrid courses (a mix of classroom and online instruction) at GVSU has more than doubled over the past five years and Hope has seen a slow increase since 2006, when it started offering online summer classes as an option.

http://www.hollandsentinel.com/news/x448234042/Area-colleges-universities-see-growth-in-online-class-enrollment

by Getting Smart

Udemy expands online learning features, including student-teacher Q&A, progress tracking, and a personalized recommendation engine. The online learning platform Udemy.com today debuted a complete website redesign, enabling students to track their progress, interact more deeply with instructors and discover new courses relevant to them. People take courses on Udemy to learn new skills that help them nurture their passions, get raises or promotions and switch jobs or careers. The news closely follows the announcement of Udemy’s top ten earning instructors, who brought in an average of $165,448 in course sales in the past year, indicating gains in online education.

http://gettingsmart.com/news/udemy-launches-redesigned-website-help-students-learn-skills-faster-engage-more-deeply-course-content/

by katiek2, the Corridor of Uncertainty

Is paper a more effective teaching medium than speech? Stupid question isn’t it? It depends what you write, what you say, how you express yourself and above all what do actually do with these media. That’s why I get rather tired of the endless discussions about so-called e-learning. Is it more effective than chalk and talk? Does it lead to better student grades? Again rather irrelevant questions. Computers enable us to communicate in ways that were impossible a few years ago. The internet is where most information in the world is now stored. Any education that does not make use of these should have a very good reason why not. Computers and the net are the default settings of today’s education system just as a chalkboard and textbooks were the default settings of the past. It’s not a question of which is better, it’s essential that we use the knowledge base and communicative channels that are relevant in today’s society.

http://acreelman.blogspot.com/2012/06/is-e-learning-effective-pointless.html

by Aaron H Doering, University World

How do we engage students while assisting them to learn in a way that the learning ‘sticks’ and is transferable to other areas of their lives? This is a concern that educators have grappled with since at least the time of John Dewey, who emphasised the importance of spurring a continuum of learning with a focus on collaboration and creative problem-solving. As we think about online learning, this challenge deepens. Technology may open new worlds to learners but does not, by itself, inspire critical or creative thinking, or deep and engaged learning.

http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20120627151042328

By MICHAEL FITZPATRICK, NY Times

The virtual teacher has arrived — flickering away on a screen on a school bus, in a bunk bed or in the shade of a beach umbrella, and turning traditional education on its head. Thanks to digital media like video-on-demand broadcasts, or VODcasts, lectures that students would normally receive in the classroom are migrating outside of brick and mortar schools. TED, the global organization that specializes in both conferences and online inspirational talks, has taken the idea a step further with TED-Ed , a Web site with educational videos that can be customized. The site was announced in April. The idea is to use both educators and animators to produce videos for the site, which also has a YouTube channel. “It’s a better fit for education in the 21st century,” Chris Anderson, the head of TED, said at a news conference in Tokyo in late May. “It’s the next logical step in TED’s evolution.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/us/25iht-educside25.html?_r=1

By Rob Kuznia, Daily Breeze

In just one year ending in the summer of 2011, the number of K-12 students in this category shot up nationally from 200,000 to 250,000, according to the International Association for K-12 Online Learning. A decade ago, the figure was 40,000. The phenomenon of online K-12 classes is still pretty fresh – so much so that research on their effectiveness is severely lacking. And so much so that the California Department of Education has no data on their prevalence statewide. (That information will be coming in the next few months, officials say.) Colleges and universities have long offered online classes; high schools have long done the same for credit recovery. Until recently, though, online courses for the college-bound high school student were a rarity, but that’s beginning to change.

http://www.dailybreeze.com/crimeandcourts/ci_20925188/an-education-from-home

By Karen Herzog and Jason Stein, Journal Sentinel

Ray Cross readily admits that for-profit online colleges grew rapidly because traditional universities missed the boat. They weren’t flexible and affordable enough for adults who wanted to earn a degree, but couldn’t sit in a classroom while juggling a full-time job, family or military duty. For-profit colleges now enroll about 17,000 students in Wisconsin, according to Cross, chancellor for the University of Wisconsin Colleges and UW Extension. “That would be our third largest campus” if all 17,000 could be captured by the UW System, said Cross, who is leading two new state initiatives to make earning a college degree more flexible and affordable. An online degree program announced last week is expected to offer courses by this fall.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/uw-flex-degree-plan-may-be-key-to-boosting-college-grads-ag5s6ja-160140275.html