Online Learning Update

by Taylor O’Quinn, the NC State Technician

It has been a semester since the University dropped the extra charge for online courses, and some teachers say the work ethic of students enrolled in these classes disappeared with the fee. The University dropped the premium for taking an online course for full-time, degree-seeking students in the fall semester of 2012. Since then, the grade distributions for many online courses have been more varied than they were previously. Melissa Hart, a finance lecturer for the Poole College of Management, teaches two live courses and two online courses. According to Hart, students believe online courses will be easier than live courses, but she warns this is not always the case. “It’s much easier to go to class than to tell yourself to make time for an online course,” Hart said.

http://www.technicianonline.com/news/article_ea6cc94e-5bab-11e2-93f3-0019bb30f31a.html

by Jordan Weissmann, the Atlantic

If U.S. colleges and universities are ever going to bring down their costs, it means that one day they’re going to have to buck up and embrace online learning as regular tool for teaching undergrads. Babson Survey Research Group has released its latest poll tracking attitudes about online education within academia, and as in past years, it’s evidence of a big split between administrators, a large portion of whom see the web as key to the future, and professors, who are mostly suspicious. On the whole, 69 percent of the academic leaders who were interviewed agreed that online learning would be “critical” the long-term plans of the school, up from around half a decade ago. Whereas administrators are growing more enthusiastic about the web–or at least coming to terms with its importance–professors still seem to be on the fence. Only 32 percent of the academic officers polled said their faculty “accepted the value and legitimacy of online education.” That figure hasn’t changed much in eight years. The vast majority are still “neutral” on the issue.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/colleges-are-warming-up-to-online-learning-teachers-are-not/266947/

By Joe McKendrick, Smart Planet

While only a small handful of educational institutions currently support the offering of massive open online courses (MOOCs), new projects are in the planning stages, and the number of offerings may soon triple. In addition, a record number of institutions now see online learning as essential to their course delivery strategies. These are some of the findings of a newly released study published by the Babson Survey Research Group and the College Board, covering the responses of more than 2,800 academic leaders. MOOCs, first pioneered by two Stanford professors in the fall of 2011, are delivered online, generally at no charge, to global audiences that may run into the hundreds of thousands of students. In most cases, certificates of completion are issued to students successfully completing the coursework.

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/adoption-of-massive-open-online-courses-to-triple-study/9685

by ASSOCIATED PRESS

The University of California has spent more than $4 million marketing its new online courses, but so far it’s attracting few students outside the UC system.  The university began offering 14 UC-quality digital courses for college credit a year ago, aiming to generate new revenue by enrolling students worldwide. The San Francisco Chronicle reports 1,700 UC students have taken the online courses, but only one not already enrolled in the UC system: a high-school girl who paid $1,400 for a pre-calculus class. Four more non-UC students signed up Monday. UC Online’s interim director, Keith Williams, said its $4.3 million marketing effort is “taking longer than we’d hoped.”

http://www.ocregister.com/news/online-382792-students-courses.html

by the University of Illinois Springfield

The University of Illinois Springfield’s online bachelor’s degree programs and graduate business program rank highly on U.S. News & World Report’s 2013 list of the best online education programs in the country. “These rankings once again acknowledge that UIS is a national leader in online learning,” said UIS Chancellor Susan J. Koch. “UIS online programs are exceptional because they are taught by talented faculty who work very hard to create productive communities in their online classes and because we provide strong support for online students.” UIS is among the top 100 Best Online Bachelor’s Programs in the country, while UIS also ranks 16th nationwide in the category of Best Online Graduate Business Programs.

http://news.uis.edu/2013/01/uis-online-bachelors-and-graduate.html

By Tanya Roscorla, Center for Digital Ed

Online learning could help address higher education’s affordability problem. But it’s not the only solution. And it’s going to take teamwork and out-of-the-box thinking to cut education’s cost without sacrificing quality. These are just three of the major points that came out of a California higher education summit on Tuesday, Jan. 8. Set up by the Twenty Million Minds Foundation, the RE:BOOT gathering brought together online course providers, university leaders, faculty, policy leaders and students at UCLA.

http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/3-Online-Learning-Points.html

By Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Ed

A key part of that validation process will involve what Coursera officials call “keystroke biometrics”—analyzing each user’s pattern and rhythm of typing to serve as a kind of fingerprint. Students who want a verified certificate will have to decide early in the course and pay upfront. Paying that fee will put students on what the company is calling the “Signature Track.” The company and colleges are still struggling to decide what to charge for the certificates, though in its latest announcement Coursera said the price would run $30 to $100. Officials also stressed that they would offer financial aid to students who demonstrated that they could not afford the fees but could benefit from the verified certificates.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/coursera-announces-details-for-selling-certificates-and-verifying-identities/41519

By Katherine Mangan, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Cornell University’s online spinoff is moving into MOOCs, with a free marketing course in its hospitality program starting on Tuesday. But the program will be designed to steer students toward a follow-up, for-credit course for $1,200. The free online course, “Marketing the Hospitality Brand Through New Media: Social, Mobile, and Search,” is being offered by eCornell. It’s geared toward people working in sales, marketing, and financial positions in the hospitality industry, and is being taught by Robert J. Kwortnik and William Carroll, faculty members at Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration. The school has been offering online courses through eCornell since 2002, but this is the first one that is being pitched as a massive open online course, or MOOC. Cornell officials hope the class will attract thousands of students.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/ecornell-to-offer-mooc-that-steers-students-to-for-credit-follow-up/41433

by JASON LEWIS, Minneapolis Star Tribune

The knee-jerk defenders of the overpriced status quo in higher ed are on a collision course with reality. They will claim that average college graduates make more than nongrads — if they can find a job in their chosen fields — but ignore that student loan debt has risen to $1 trillion and is quickly wiping out most gains. Were it not for the massive amounts of taxpayer subsidies via state appropriations and financial aid (the $40 billion Pell Grant program now funds half of all undergrads), most universities would have long ago priced themselves out of the market. But instead of eliminating the frivolous coursework, or layer upon layer of administrative overhead (as the Wall Street Journal starkly documented last week), or universit- funded institutes designed to hype the supposed evils of, say, urban sprawl — yes, billions in endowments could be put to other uses if the benefactors were only asked — the regents, trustees, and obedient lawmakers predictably circle the wagons and hope to stave off cheaper technological competition.

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/185704342.html

BY MARÁ ROSE WILLIAMS, The Kansas City Star

The University of Kansas, University of Missouri and University of Missouri-Kansas City are among schools that are watching MOOCs before wading in. Kansas State University may soon announce some movement into the MOOC realm, but “details are not ready for release yet,” said Sue Maes, dean of continuing education. “I applaud the efforts,” Maes said. “Millions of people never have the opportunity to travel out of their underdeveloped village, so I compliment them (the elite schools) for being willing to share their knowledge with the world. I think all will benefit from this practice.” At KU, officials think MOOCs “are still too new, and there are a lot of unanswered questions,” said Julie Loats, director of the university’s Center for Online and Distance Learning. Still, Loats sees their potential for learning and growth as boundless.

http://www.kansascity.com/2013/01/05/3996334/growth-of-free-online-classes.html

by Lauren Landry, Bostinno

Harvard recently announced four new edX classes, including a 12-week copyright course from Harvard Law School. The difference between “Copyright” and the rest of the subjects being offered through the open-source technology platform, though? Only 500 students are being given the opportunity to enroll, as opposed to the 100,000 who registered for Harvard’s first free massive open online courses prior to launch. The course is being taught by Intellectual Property Law Professor William Fisher, who’s also the faculty director of the University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. When the class commences on January 28th, however, why won’t more students be participating? As the Copyright course description states: Enrollment for the course is limited, in keeping with the belief that high-quality legal education depends, at least in part, upon supervised small-group discussions of difficult issues.

http://bostinno.com/2013/01/03/harvard-edx-courses-harvard-law-school-copyright-course/#ss__279656_145022_0__ss

by the Economist

The teacher who corrects your correspondent’s awful Mandarin is soft-spoken, authoritative and far away. Thanks to Skype, you can have face-to-face lessons with native speakers of more or less any language without stirring from your chair. Technology may one day make language-learning redundant (see article); meanwhile, it makes it easier. Language-teaching companies are slowly embracing technology. Berlitz is the biggest. Founded in 1878, its method is simple: seat no more than four or five students with a teacher who will utter not a word of their native tongue. Berlitz can also group learners with a specific need: tourists, say, or energy executives.

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21569067-technology-starting-change-language-learning-linguists-online

by Christopher Pappas, eLearning Industry

As an online educator, teacher, facilitator you probably wonder what kind of the 7 styles of learning are the most effective for your students, learners. I am sure that you are familiar with the VARK Learning Styles. However, the http://www.learning-styles-online.com introduce three more learning styles that you should be familiar with to understand how your online students learn. The following infographic of the 7 Styles of Learning is based on the http://www.learning-styles-online.com and was produced by Blue Mango Learning.

http://elearningindustry.com/subjects/concepts/item/394-7-styles-learning-online-students-prefer

by Lauren Landry, Bostinno

To be a professor, you need a classroom packed with bright-eyed students eager to soak up your sage advice, right? Wrong. All you now need is Professor Direct, a platform designed by StraighterLine to eliminate the classroom all together. Sure, you’ll still need students, and they’ll need to be willing to pay you at least $49, but $49 sure is cheaper than any college’s thousands-of-dollars worth of tuition. StraighterLine—pegged one of the 10 most innovative companies in education “for developing an online for-profit college where the first year costs $999″—announced Professor Direct in December. Described as a new kind of eBay, the platform allows professors to set their own sticker price and sell their courses directly to students.

http://bostinno.com/2013/01/04/straighterlines-professor-direct-cheap-online-education/

by David Safier, Blog for Arizona

Dropouts getting their high school diplomas by taking online classes? Sunnyside School District is trying it out, with help from Mayor Jonathan Rothschild. The District will loan a laptop computer to students who take the online courses and, it sounds like, provide internet access at their homes if they don’t have it. Students can take the courses at home with online access to teachers, or they can do the coursework in a classroom setting. The cost would be minimal to the District and bring in about $3,000 per student from the state. The usual questions arise about the effectiveness of online education, but there’s a difference here. If these are people who have already given up on their high school educations and can be brought back using an alternative technique, even if the online education is less effective than the students learning in the classroom, it’s more valuable than the alternative, which is no education at all and the lack of a high school diploma, which can be a crippling disadvantage in the job market.

http://www.blogforarizona.com/blog/2013/01/sunnysides-online-classes-for-dropouts.html

by Donovan Jackson, Air University Public Affairs

As the new year unfolds, technological advancements combined with traditional learning methods are continuing to be applied at Maxwell, which will assist in the advancement of Airmen education. Emerging technologies permit Maxwell the ability to utilize new software in a way that can speed the process of Airmen education while saving money and making learning more efficient. “The utilization of technologies that present a substantial positive impact on distance learning while influencing a more cost conscious culture are already being implemented at Maxwell and Gunter,” said Dr. Bruce Murphy, vice president for academic affairs. “There is technology out there that is making education and the learning process different than what it was 15 years ago, and we are simply trying to take advantage of it. “According to Murphy, by observing some of the technological advancements made in higher education around the country, it is imperative to take advantage of what is new and already available in order to prevent from falling behind. Air University has always engaged in different forms of distance learning with students by sending books to people for correspondence programs, but, according to Murphy, with new technology education can be “quicker, better and more robust.”

http://www.maxwell.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123331504

By Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed

The fact that MOOCS and online courses have sparked new conversations on your campus about teaching and learning is a terrific development. We should be grateful whenever attention is paid to teaching. The problem is that neither MOOCS or online courses are, in themselves, a strategy to meet the challenges we all face in higher ed. MOOCS and online courses are a means, not an end, and should be understood as such. The real conversation that you should be having on campus is about your institutions’ goals around teaching and learning. Simply grafting a MOOC or an online program or online course on to the existing structure of course development and delivery will prove to be an inadequate an ineffective response to the changing higher ed market.

http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/moocs-online-learning-and-wrong-conversation

by Virtual College (UK)

The head teacher of a Welsh school has revealed she is using online learning to improve standards among her students. Denise Richards from St Julian’s School in Newport has turned to Twitter to keep pupils and staff up to speed with the latest educational techniques, the South Wales Argus reports. Consequently, the institution’s house teams and many of its departments are now communicating with young people, other teachers and parents via the social media network, with some faculties even co-ordinating projects in Maths, English and Science on the website. Ms Richards is regularly sending out tweets to encourage pupils in their academic endeavours – particularly during exam periods – and using the platform to gather student opinion on changes and events taking place around the school. PE students have also been able to talk to sporting heroes online and use their advice in class projects.

http://www.virtual-college.co.uk/news/Newport-school-using-elearning-via-Twitter-newsitems-801515255.aspx

by Rosie Redfield, Vancouver Observer

MOOCs offered by Coursera and by Udacity and EdX, are open to anyone, anywhere in the world. No fees are charged, there are no formal application procedures or prerequisites, and the courses yield no formal academic credit. Instead of hour-long lectures, MOOCs offer weekly sets of short, focused instructional videos, supplemented with computer and peer-graded homework, quizzes and exams. Students ask for and receive help in online discussion forums and even get together for study groups in cities around the world. These courses are made possible by learning management technology that eliminates the need for face-to-face lectures and human grading, so that enrolments no longer need to be capped by the size of the lecture theatre or the budget for teaching assistants. As a result, MOOCs are already attracting many thousands of students from around the world – even hundreds of thousands for some of the first computer courses. Here are some of the implications.

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/blogs/thescene/ubcs-massively-open-online-courses

by sgreenla, Pedablogy

It has been said that no plan survives first contact and that has certainly been my experience teaching online this semester. I thought I was well prepared to teach this course, as well prepared as anyone can be who has never taught a fully online course before. I have explored teaching with different digital technologies in my otherwise face-to-face courses since about 1992. I have used groupware, discussion boards, wikis, blogs, and other tools. Admittedly, I am writing this during final exam week, so I may not have enough distance yet for an objective look, but looking back it appears that many/most of the components of my course that were intended to differentiate it and make it a genuinely liberal arts & sciences experience were ultimately jettisoned in an effort to save time and cover the content.

http://pedablogy.stevegreenlaw.org/2013/01/online-teaching-learning-its-harder-than-it-looks/

by 21st Century Collaborative

I have been thinking today about truth, trust, and learning. I am going to try and weave them together in a post that makes some logical sense but if I fail, I ask your forgiveness in advance. Maybe hear this post as sound bites rather than a narrative as I try to find my way. I was listening to Dr. Ravi Zacharias and heard him say, “Intent is prior to content” and my mind exploded. I whispered, “Yes, content needs to be situated in truth (i.e. that which conforms to reality as it actually is) or context and that is why a thick schema (prior knowledge and experience) is so important.” Content (new information) will attach to existing schema and allow for easily processing (sense making) or learning. Trusting in the context (where the new content is situated) and how well it aligns with prior knowledge is what enables us to accept it as truth. Think of stacking bowls with content nestled or situated inside context. Imagine just teaching content without the context setting. Or imagine content being the big bowl, with context situated in it.

http://www.21stcenturycollaborative.com/2013/01/the-role-of-truth-trust-and-context-in-online-learning/