Online Learning Update

by James Farrell, the Conversation

While the academic commentariat has been debating the challenges and opportunities of MOOCs, not many have looked at the first-person experiences of students. As an empirical researcher, and having studied at four Australian universities, some of which pride themselves on their online and distance courses, I thought I’d enroll in a MOOC to gain a student perspective. The experience was illuminating.

http://theconversation.edu.au/an-insiders-guide-what-its-really-like-to-study-a-mooc-10718

by Joseph Kern, eLearning Industry

The on-campus introductory programming course, called CS50, is one of Harvard’s most popular electives, with over 600 students enrolled this semester. The vast majority of them are not computer science majors. Their first attempt at a CS50 MOOC this fall had over 50,000 online enrollees in September, a month before the course started. The on-campus lectures and small-group sessions are recorded and posted online for the MOOC students, who will use these to perform the same assignments through the same software, and the same learning platform as the “real” students. While I get to learn programming for free and get a cool certificate in April, providing I have completed all 8 problem sets and quizzes by then, the on-campus suckers who actually pay to learn the same information only get a few credits toward a lousy Harvard degree in return. *obligatory wink*

http://elearningindustry.com/subjects/general/item/408-learning-from-harvard-mooc-story

by Social Fish

You’ve heard that more engaged members lead to better retention. And maybe you’d like to build more interactivity into your webinars. But what if your subject matter experts are not “social”. What if your participants are not so participatory? How do you even start? Maddie Grant, CAE and Lindy Dreyer—the experts behind social media strategy firm SocialFish share specific ideas designed to encourage engagement around your online education. As educators themselves, Maddie and Lindy have methods your subject matter experts can use, along with ideas for integrating social tools into your webinar platform and instructional design.

http://www.socialfish.org/2012/12/five-engagement-techniques-for-online-learning.html

by ANYA KAMENETZ, Fast Company

The first batch of StraighterLine professors themselves hold degrees from universities ranging from Columbia to the University of Phoenix. They’ll be teaching based on StraighterLine’s few dozen self-paced offerings–15 new courses were announced for launch–ranging from humanities and general ed requirements to business, science, and remedial math and English. The professors will charge each student a premium ranging from $50 to $250 per head for additional services, like live video chat office hours, moderating discussions online, or offering and grading extra assignments. StraighterLine will also give professors a commission for any students they recruit directly through social media.

http://www.fastcoexist.com/1681058/an-ebay-for-professors-to-sell-college-courses-directly-to-students

BY JANE STANCILL, News Observer

The UNC system wants to extend degree programs to different types of students in more efficient ways, but the trick will be to accomplish that while ensuring quality. A panel of business and education leaders on Wednesday heard about what other states are doing to measure the quality of education at their universities. The UNC Advisory Committee on Strategic Directions is giving input to UNC system leaders on how the state’s public universities should graduate more students while better preparing them for jobs of the future. The work is expected to conclude early next year with a recommendation to ratchet up degree attainment among North Carolina’s adult population. The five-year plan is likely to put a strong focus on online instruction and more flexible ways for students to earn degrees and post-college certificates.

http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/12/13/2541432/unc-looks-to-boost-online-education.html

by Virtual College UK

A top blogger has revealed he is rolling out online training to individuals who need help with starting up their own websites. John Chow – whose own blog is currently one of the largest in the last two years – is making his course available solely on the internet and it can be accessed by any web-connected device. The young man achieved success after teaching himself how to drive traffic and market his content around the world and his online programme is seeking to provide people with tips on his own experiences in the industry. According to Mr Chow, his successful blogging has earned him 97,000 Twitter followers, 140,000 subscribers and 100,000 opt-ins to his email address.

http://www.virtual-college.co.uk/news/Blogger-rolls-out-online-training-course-newsitems-801505402.aspx

By KAREN SYMMS GALLAGHER, US News

Karen Symms Gallagher is dean of the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. With the rush of pronouncements, you’d think Higher Ed 2.0 is here, all online, all the time. Brick-and-mortar and ivy are passé. Not so fast. Much of what’s touted as innovation in traditional higher education falls short for students seeking high-quality online degrees that will serve them in a tough job market.

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2012/12/12/rethinking-higher-ed-open-online-learning

By Shaun Courtney, DC Patch

Georgetown University will join Harvard and MIT’s edX initiative to provide free, open, online courses, so people around the world can become the students of the nation’s top higher learning institutions. “EdX is an innovation that will expand access to high-quality educational content for millions around the world while helping us better understand how technology can improve the academic experience for students in classrooms across our campuses,” explained Harvard President Drew Faust in a press release. “In joining edX, we become part of a consortium of institutions on the cutting edge of higher education,” said Georgetown President Jack DeGioia in a press release.

http://georgetown.patch.com/articles/gu-partners-with-harvard-mit-for-online-learning

by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Professor Direct lets instructors determine not only how much to charge for such courses, but also how much time they want to devote to services like office hours, online tutorials, and responding to students’ e-mails. The new service is run by StraighterLine, a company that offers online, self-paced introductory courses. Unlike massive open online courses, or MOOC’s, StraighterLine’s courses aren’t free. But tuition is lower than what traditional colleges typically charge—the company calls its pricing “ultra-affordable.” A handful of colleges accept StraighterLine courses for transfer credit. Instructors who offer courses on Professor Direct will be able to essentially set their own sticker prices, as long as they are higher than the company’s base price. One professor teaching an online mathematics course with a base price of $49, for example, plans to charge $99. For each student who signs up, the company will pocket the $49 base price, and the professor gets the remaining $50.

http://chronicle.com/article/New-Platform-Lets-Professors/136251/

by Jesse Stommel, Hybrid Pedagogy

I have no interest in debating the whether of online learning. That bird has most assuredly flown. What I’d like to do here is outline a pedagogy of online learning — not best practices, but points of departure to encourage a diversity of pedagogies. The first mistake of many online classes and the majority of MOOCs (so far) is that they try to replicate something we do in face-to-face classes, mapping the (sometimes pedagogically-sound, sometimes bizarre) traditions of on-ground institutions onto digital space. Trying to make an online class function exactly like an on-ground class is a missed opportunity. There’s a lot that happens in F2F classrooms that just can’t be replicated in an online environment, and that’s okay. Better to ask ourselves what can be achieved online and what sorts of classes (or learning experiences) we can construct to leverage the potentials of the specific interface or community.

http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/Journal/files/Online_Learning_Manifesto.html

By Scott J. Wilson, LA Times

Free, online no-credit college-level courses from some of the nation’s most prestigious universities. The number of free college-level courses offered online has surged this year, with some of the nation’s most prestigious universities getting involved. The classes are open to anyone, and although you won’t earn college credit, you will get a chance to learn from professors and other experts at no charge. Some key websites:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-five-courses-20121209,0,7435413.story

by: JENNA ROSS, Star Tribune

Take a computer science course from Harvard, study circuits with a pair of MIT professors or master machine learning in a Stanford University class, all from a laptop in Minneapolis. Tuition? Free. These so-called MOOCs, or “massive open online courses,” are being offered by an ever-growing number of the country’s most elite universities. As they proliferate, they are forcing traditional colleges to confront tricky questions about their own cost and credits. But some scholars warn against hyping these online courses as higher education’s salvation before studying whether they’re working. “MOOCs have been around for a long time. They’re called books,” said U chemistry Prof. Christopher Cramer. “The model removes an instructor from the equation … so what’s left is just content. It may be really well-designed content, if you’re willing to spend the money, but it’s just content.”

http://www.startribune.com/local/182682111.html

by Catherine Armitage, The Age (AU)

The Massive Open Online Courses in higher education that exploded in popularity and profile this year seem to be the perfect model of efficient education delivery: online courses delivered free or super-cheap by the world’s best teachers from the world’s best institutions, interactively and to hundreds of thousands of students, anywhere, any time. But they are only more efficient than traditional face-to-face methods if students learn just as well or better from them. Research to date provides little evidence to support strong arguments either way. A study by Ithaka S+R, a non-profit group seeking to aid digital transformation in education and publishing, compared interactive online learning with classroom delivery for 600 students in an introductory statistics course. It found no significant difference between them. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation put $3 million into MOOC research projects. One question it seeks to answer is: for which students, disciplines and contexts are the courses more or less effective?

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/grading-the-online-courses-20121208-2b24v.html

by Rip Empson, TechCrunch

Udemy has attracted about 400K registered students and a quarter of its approved instructors have made at least $10K from selling their courses on the site — with some even seeing six-figure earnings. With Udemy taking 30 percent of those earnings, co-founder Eren Bali recently told us that, over the last nine months, the company has seen steady 20 percent month-over-month growth. Building on this consistent growth, the startup is announcing today that it has raised $12 million in series B financing, led by Insight Venture Partners. Existing investors Lightbank Capital, MHS Capital and Learn Capital all contributed to the round, which brings Udemy’s total funding to $16 million.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/07/online-learning-marketplace-udemy-lands-12m-to-expand-its-course-catalog-go-cross-platform/

by Stefan Popenici, Popenici Blog

Even if universities may look well on the surface there is an increasing (and justified) concern that all will change soon. New data and analysis increase the anxiety that the current monopoly of higher education will be lost and just few universities will survive. No one knows which, how many or even if any university will have the chance to celebrate the middle of this century.  An increasing number of disruptive factors – adding to the obvious and massive impact of Internet and online education – already are changing the landscape for higher education: the significant increase of youth isolation and marginalization, graduate unemployment and persistent underemployment, a concerning economic forecast of a constant slowdown of global growth (with implications for numbers of international students) and issues evolving from the global ageing population (and implications on lifelong learning strategies and numbers of local students). There is even more on the horizon and – while teaching and learning are still organized within university walls by models designed in early 1960s – the pace of change is accelerating.

http://popenici.com/2012/12/03/storm/

by JORGE GONCALVES, Learningonlineinfo

The debate online vs. offline learning seems interminable. There are so many points to consider that it is difficult to get a definite conclusion. Some argue that traditional learning is better because is the only way to maintain a fluid and solid learning process. Other models are always considered inferior or less effective. However, students seem to prefer the online learning model and in most cases obtain better results (when comparing the same courses online vs. offline models). The cost is another important factor. Online degrees can be up to 80 times less expensive than traditional degrees. This is an universal rule, but this can be a decisive point for the student’s choice. check out the infographic!  http://www.getarealdegree.com/2012/08/online-vs-offline-college-students-infographic/ 

http://learningonlineinfo.org/infographic-online-vs-offline-college-students/

By Rebecca Marcucci, the Rocket

Imagine you can take a class where you are an avatar – not a lanky and scaly blue cinematic creature, but an online personality much like an Xbox character. In this type of classroom, you can ask questions and interact with students, much like the atmosphere of a physical classroom, except it’s a virtual world. The classes are not limited solely to student resources like D2L. They are aimed at moving online and leaning away from D2L into something more advanced that students seem to respond well towards, said business professor at SRU and virtual reality class developer Dr. John Golden. Just like the nature of virtual reality, the classes are geared toward immersing students into an alternate world. This world of course, is Slippery Rock’s campus. “Let’s say for instance, our students wanted to view Slippery Rock as an entirely green campus,” Golden said. “You could test that in an online world.”

http://www.theonlinerocket.com/campus-life/new-technology-opens-door-to-world-of-virtual-classes-for-students-1.2966272#.UMJjWYPAdwI

By Don Seiffert, Mass High Tech

As online courses proliferate with the launch of initiatives like edX at Harvard and MIT earlier this year, Newton-based Software Secure has announced a partnership with the International Center for Academic Integrity to develop a standardized criteria for evaluating such courses. The partnership will focus on developing The Trusted Seal, which can be awarded to online courses that meet a set of standards to educate, promote and protect academic integrity in the online learning environment, according to the company. Software Secure CEO and Founder Douglas M. Winneg told Mass High Tech that while online course offerings like edX are focused on convenience, affordability, scalability and efficacy, “we are helping promote accountability.”

http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2012/12/03/daily45-Software-Secure-to-help-develop-criteria-for-online-courses.html

by Suzi Parker, Take Part

Millennials are the first generation to grow up with constant technology and personal computers. That might explain why they see such a value in online education. A recent poll by Northeastern University showed that 18 to 29 year olds had a more negative view about attending college because of the high cost, and a more positive opinion about online classes than their older counterparts. The survey also showed more than half of the millennials had taken an online course. Online education is attracting hundreds of thousands of students a year. Perhaps this is why more brick-and-mortar universities are searching for an online identity.

http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/12/05/online-degrees-valuable-traditional-college-diploma

by: JENNA ROSS , Star Tribune

Colleges known for face-to-face instruction are dipping a toe online. This summer, professors from Macalester and St. Olaf plan to offer an online calculus class for credit. For Macalester, it’s a first. Unlike the massive, free online courses making the news, this will be “extremely personalized,” promised Chad Topaz, associate professor at Macalester in St. Paul. He is developing the course with Kristina Garrett, an associate professor at St. Olaf, in Northfield. The pair will video chat one-on-one with students weekly. Enrollment will be capped at about 20.

http://www.startribune.com/local/182286071.html?refer=y

by Mika Hoffman, EdTech Digest

MOOCs do represent a significant educational innovation that can make the learning process more engaging. Often students can learn as much or more through online interaction with their peers studying the same subjects as those who participate in a typical campus-based course. Within a MOOC peers may grade each others’ work and provide valuable feedback that helps students to recognize their strengths and weaknesses. While all of this can enrich the learning process, it doesn’t provide recognized evidence of the learning that has taken place. To milk a MOOC for all that you can get out of it, use a recognized credit-by-examination program to provide proof positive to your school, employer – or yourself – that what you really learned what you studied.

http://edtechdigest.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/moocs-making-the-most-of-what-you-learn/