Online Learning Update

By Jessie Chuang, Classroom Aid

There are several big movements underway that are worthy of debate and possible consideration as we look to help education become the 21st century, user-centered, on-demand, engaging, technology-centric activity that it has not been for much of its existence. Game-based learning (GBL), or gamification, is one of the models that commonly gets touted as a cure-all for the problems with education because of the popularity of gaming in our society (New Media Institute). While there are problems with the gamification movement as it currently stands, the model has several areas in which it differs sufficiently from traditional education to make it an intriguing possibility. Here is a look at several of those differences.

http://classroom-aid.com/2012/08/16/game-based-vs-traditional-learning-whats-the-difference/

by Randee Blair, Center for Talent Development, Northwestern University

Arecent hot topic in education has been the flipped classroom debate. With the growth of online options, learning has expanded outside of the school classroom, and this trend only seems to be growing. What’s flipped is that instead of doing homework, students watch online instructional movies, videos, lectures and visit websites at home, with the opportunity to revisit challenging sections and formulate questions. The teacher then has more time to facilitate discussion, based on these questions and is then able to help students with activities and assigned problems reinforcing the concepts during class time. Why are flipped classrooms gaining popularity?

http://ctdblog.northwestern.edu/2012/08/16/flipped-classrooms-maximizing-class-time

by Ignatia

Augmented learning is one of the revolutionary technologies of contemporary learning. Augmented technology is still emerging as applications are being explored. But the learning experience offered by augmented solutions totally fits the mobile learner. Víctor Alvarez from Spain is one of the augmented learning experts during the MobiMOOC course. During the augmented learning week (22 – 29 September 2012), he will focus on what you can achieve with augmented learning and how you can start with embedding it. Here you can find the augmented learning wikipage that offers an overview of what Víctor will cover, in addition to this he is already looking forward to hear all of our experiences, augmented hopes and dreams. This presentation already gives a brief overview of what you can expect.

http://ignatiawebs.blogspot.com/2012/08/interested-in-augmented-learning-join.html

By Ben Pokross, Chronicle of Higher Ed

As enrollment has rapidly increased in free online classes, also known as Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOC’s, students are increasingly forming groups, both online and in the real world, to study and socialize. Whether aiming to make the experience more personal or to learn more about the possibilities of free online education, the students are seeking out various ways to connect with classmates.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/students-in-free-online-courses-form-groups-to-study-and-socialize/38887

By Kevin Carey, Chronicle of Higher Ed

The comparison to journalism is apt. The Internet can’t replace the expensive, time-consuming process of investigative journalism, in which a highly-trained, expensive professional works with diligence, skill, judgment, and insight. The problem with newspapers is that they have traditionally lost money on investigative journalism while earning healthy margins on things that can, and have been, replaced by the Internet, such as classified advertising, sports updates, and opining. So, too, with the kind of high-quality education in philosophy that I’m sure Dr. Hieronymi provides. Even if she’s entirely correct that she’s not replaceable by a MOOC, that misses the point: Low-cost Internet courses will replace many other things that subsidize real education as she defines it.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/mooconomics/51059

by Virtual-Strategy

While most California students will be grabbing their backpacks and heading to the bus or carpool, many California Virtual Academies (CAVA) students will be taking a few steps from the breakfast table to their computers to log in for their first day of school. CAVA is a tuition-free, online public school available to students in K-12 in most counties across the state of California. Students go to school full-time, online, using 21st century tools and the engaging, award-winning K¹² curriculum. CAVA gives parents and families the choice to maximize their success with individualized learning. The school is celebrating its 10th year this academic year.

http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2012/08/16/california-virtual-academies-students-go-back-school-without-leaving-home

by Phil Hill, e-Literate

One of the interesting trends over the past year or two is the emergence of educational delivery models as a locus of innovation – with new business models, applications of technology, and tight integrations of educational content and delivery platforms. In part 1 of this series, I described a new landscape of educational delivery models. In part 2 I described the master course concept that is the basis for most scalable for-profit and not-for-profit online programs. In part 3 and part 4 I described the emergence of MOOCs as well as four barriers they must overcome to become self-sustaining. In this post, I’d like to focus on the less glamorous, but perhaps more significant, movement in self-paced and competency-based online education.

http://mfeldstein.com/competency-based-online-education-the-rising-tide-of-college-affordability/

by Online Learning Insights

If you’ve ever been a homeowner you know about improvement projects – the endless list of items that need fixing, painting or restoring. If you lived in a place long enough you may have gone further and replaced original parts of the home with newer and [presumably] better ones, maybe fixtures, wiring or windows. In this instance you’ve graduated from upgrading your home to retrofitting. This phenomenon parallels the revision process for an online course. With the pace of new educational tools and technologies – retrofitting is a given. I’ve just finished working with several professors at my workplace to redesign their courses, but I’m looking forward to the next phase of retrofitting several other courses in need of an update. In this post I will outline a 5-step strategy for retrofitting an existing online course.

http://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/how-to-retrofit-an-online-course/

By Paul Riismandel, Streaming Media

In my last column, I made the proclamation that a school or college that doesn’t have a video strategy isn’t ready for an online learning strategy. I received feedback from a number of folks who said that assertion resonated with their experience, so I want to take the opportunity to explain why a video-specific strategy is important and delve into the factors that should inform it. Video has moved into the IT spotlight on many campuses, but too often the move is reactionary. Faculty, students, and staff are asking for ways to share and distribute video. When there isn’t an accessible on-campus solution, they upload to sharing sites such as YouTube and Vimeo. While those can be fine solutions for many applications, the lack of strong security gives many administrators chills, as does the difficulty in managing the life span or intellectual property rights of what is shared.

http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Having-an-Online-Video-Strategy-Is-Crucial-for-Higher-Education-84382.aspx

by the Droid Guy

Educators all over the world are struggling to motivate students to take up technology-related majors and really to just learn in general. An Online Education start up known widely as Khan Academy, has a fantastic approach to this issue. “Computer Science is an intensely creative field,” says Shantanu Sinha, the President of Khan Academy. Sinha gave TechCrunch an exclusive look into their new education portal that will teach Computer Science fundamentals through interactive drawing. “We really wanted to focus on creating something that could inspire young children, and get them excited and motivated to explore CS further,” he continued. This interactive design is a major step for the website that has been almost based on YouTube lectures. Online Education is always supposedly getting what people call “revolutionary” ideas, which usually just happened to be someone else’s idea with an added feature. Often, it’s almost just a recycled version of our current education system in a digital format too. That said, the Khan Academy Computer Science project is what I would deem beyond what anyone else has thought of. I am majorly impressed.

http://thedroidguy.com/2012/08/khan-academy-launches-the-future-of-computer-science/

By Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Students taking free online courses offered by the startup company Coursera have reported dozens of incidents of plagiarism, even though the courses bear no academic credit. This week a professor leading one of the so-called Massive Open Online Courses posted a plea to his 39,000 students to stop plagiarizing, and Coursera’s leaders say they will review the issue and consider adding plagiarism-detection software in the future. In recent weeks, students in at least three Coursera humanities courses have complained of plagiarized assignments by other students. The courses use peer grading, so each student is asked to grade and offer comments on the work of fellow students.

http://chronicle.com/article/Dozens-of-Plagiarism-Incidents/133697/

By Tanya Roscorla, Converge

A flurry of tweets this week showed people signing up for classes with Coursera, edX and Udacity, three organizations that work with universities to provide massively open online courses to anyone at no charge. These student sign-ups follow two major announcements recently: 12 more universities partnered with Coursera and UC Berkeley joined edX. In light of these events, three working professionals share why they decided to take massively open online courses.

http://www.convergemag.com/policy/Why-Massively-Open-Online-Courses.html

by Turnitin

Turnitin, the leader in originality checking and online grading, today announced that it has opened registration for its free online course, “Turnitin Academy Live.” This 10-session course will lead instructors through a powerful pedagogy for “writing to learn,” exploring practical methods for incorporating the use of Turnitin to encourage original writing and deliver more meaningful feedback, while engaging students in the writing process and streamlining class activities. The Turnitin Academy Live course begins Tuesday, Aug. 28 and will be available live and on-demand. The course is also eligible for continuing education units (CEUs) in partnership with Saint Mary’s College of California for a fee of $50. Educators can register for the entire course for free, or sign up for each class individually at:

http://turnitin.com/en_us/training/professional-development

http://www.sacbee.com/2012/08/14/4724510/turnitin-offers-professional-development.html

by: Bianca Da Silva, College Classes

The Khan Academy recently announced that it will soon make free online courses in computer science available to students that would like to enhance their knowledge within this field. The classes will be made available in the form of instructional videos, and the dean of computer sciences within the academy, John Resig, recently Tweeted that, “this project is going to blow the doors off computer science education. I have a feeling that people are going to have A LOT of fun with it”.

http://www.collegeclasses.com/khan-academy-launches-free-online-classes-in-computer-science/

by Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed

The Saylor Foundation has nearly finished creating a full suite of free, online courses in a dozen popular undergraduate majors. And the foundation is now offering a path to college credit for its offerings by partnering with two nontraditional players in higher education – Excelsior College and StraighterLine. The project began three years ago, when the foundation began hiring faculty members on a contract basis to build courses within their subject areas. The professors scoured the web for free Open Education Resources (OER), but also created video lectures and tests. The foundation currently has more than 240 courses up on its website. They are self-paced and automated, and designed to cover all the requirements of an undergraduate major in disciplines ranging from chemistry and computer science to art history and English literature, as well as a general education major. The course material is roughly 95 percent complete, Saylor officials said, and should be finished this fall.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/08/15/saylor-foundations-free-courses-offer-path-credit

BY KORAN ADDO, the Advocate

Colleges will have to fully embrace online education to keep up with students’ changing tastes or be left behind, the head of the LSU System told the Press Club of Baton Rouge on Monday. Interim System President William Jenkins also said the university’s hospital system is in the uncomfortable position of having to court private partners to stay afloat at a time when state funding for uninsured care has been slashed. The LSU System includes the $3.5 billion network of four university campuses, a law school, two medical schools, 10 hospitals and dozens of outpatient medical clinics across Louisiana. Roughly 70 percent of Louisiana’s doctors were trained in the LSU system.

http://theadvocate.com/home/3625031-125/jenkins-urges-online-push

By Kyla Calvert, KPBS

San Diego State and other California State campuses are offering students courses that blend in-person and online learning, hoping they’ll get the best of both worlds.

SAN DIEGO — Increasing the number of online classes is just one way California’s public universities have been trying to serve students despite years of budget cuts. That has spawned a debate about whether students can get the same quality of education online. At San Diego State University a middle-of-the-road approach is gaining ground. At 8 a.m. on a recent Thursday Helen Noble’s Elementary Business Statistics students were having one of their final summer session classes. But the students only spend half their time with Noble in that classroom. The rest of the time they log in online for lectures.

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2012/aug/14/sdsu-classes-bridge-face-face-versus-digital-divid/

By Peter Delevett, Mercury News

San Francisco-based Knowmia trolls the Web for teaching videos, then organizes them into study plans developed by a network of teachers from around the country. The startup has quietly amassed a trove of more than 7,000 public-domain videos from sources including YouTube, Vimeo and the websites of various government agencies.

“There’s so much out there that people can be overwhelmed,” said Braunstein. “Parents want a curated solution.” Visitors to Knowmia’s website see a dashboard of course offerings organized by subject matter. The site soon will add personalization software to help users find content that’s most germane to them; Braunstein likens it to “Pandora for education,” referring to the music-recommendation service.

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_21308261/flip-video-co-founder-unveils-new-e-learning

by James M. Patterson, Minding the Campus

What’s more, these mediating ventures will supply the technological and content-creation expertise that universities lack, removing the barriers to success. But seldom acknowledged is that offering these courses does absolutely nothing for the involved institutions’ bottom line — nor, indeed, does it lower tuition costs for on-campus students. The business model is still developing, but it appears likely that the course-providing services will make the money, not the universities, which not only provide the content for free but pay substantial service fees to boot.

http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2012/08/big_troubles_ahead_for_online_.html

By Isabella Shaya, State News

MSU’s mainstream online learning management systems have come and gone, from ANGEL to Moodle and now Desire2Learn, but for about 20 years, LearningOnline Network with Computer-Assisted Personalized Approach, or LON-CAPA, has remained almost untouched and is used by professors and students across campus. LON-CAPA was first developed at MSU and used mostly in science and math courses, but the system has spread to various classes and to other universities, colleges and high schools. Gerd Kortemeyer, director of the LON-CAPA project and associate professor of physics in Lyman Briggs College, said LON-CAPA is used mostly in advanced or specialized courses, such as physics, statistics or art history.

http://www.statenews.com/index.php/article/2012/08/lon-capa_outlasts_other_online_learning_systems

by Curt Bonk, TravelinEdMan

Among the chief goals of education is to help the human species deal with unique problems, issues, or situations as they arise. When we can have the equivalent of the Library of Alexandria in our pockets on an inexpensive flash drive, we must begin to question exactly what should be taught and ultimately what knowledge is. As the forms of such knowledge-based technology multiply and reduce in price, a new dialogue needs to open up about the benefits and intensions of education. The purpose of education has swiftly pivoted from knowing what something is to knowing how to find out about that thing. The basic tools of knowledge discovery are now Wikipedia and other wiki-like tools, YouTube, Facebook.

http://travelinedman.blogspot.com/2012/08/unabridged-interview-extreme-learning.html