Online Learning Update

By Susannah Snider, Kiplinger’s

Lately, MOOCs, or “massive open online courses,” have become the hot topic for educators and policymakers looking for ways to expand access to higher education. Harvard, MIT and Duke are among the growing list of institutions that offer these free online tutorials, through partners such as Coursera, edX and Udacity. The courses typically offer a certificate of completion, but few offer credit toward a degree. That could change. Last October, Antioch University in Los Angeles launched a pilot partnership with Coursera to offer several MOOCs for credit. And the American Council on Education has begun evaluating the creditworthiness of a number of Coursera MOOCs. If approved, those courses would have enrollees take an identity-verified exam (for example, via webcam) and pay a fee.

http://www.kiplinger.com/article/college/T042-C011-S002-rules-massive-open-online-courses.html

By Jim Sanders, Sacramento Bee

Gov. Jerry Brown and California university officials say it’s inevitable. Targeting a tech-savvy generation, they are paving the way for more students to pass courses and obtain degrees without ever going to class. Given budget constraints, they say boosting online programs is the only way to accommodate more students without expanding campuses and making higher education even more expensive.

http://www.sacbee.com/2013/02/10/5178351/online-instruction-destined-to.html

by Mark Slavit, KRCG

University of Missouri officials announced 16 new online programs Friday morning. The $2.5 million investment was in response to the demand for increased online learning opportunities. The programs provide more than 25 new undergraduate online courses. Those courses will allow students to earn a bachelor’s degree from a distance with little or no transfer credit. UM Provost Brian Foster said, “Some of our online programs are 100% online. Some of them are hybrid programs that are mixed online and on campus. These multiple learning formats add to our ability to serve the people of the state in an appropriate and efficient way.” The demand for online learning is at an all-time high among students of all ages.

http://www.connectmidmissouri.com/news/story.aspx?id=858375

by Sue Gee, I Programmer

Computer science seems ideally suited to online courses. Professors seem to think so as well as those who are eager to learn new skills. Here’s a round up of some of the CS MOOCs starting this month. Udacity’s latest new courses, HTML5 Game Development and Introduction to Parallel Programming started on February 4, 2013 but there’s still time to catch up if you want to be in the first cohort of students taking the class “live” on its first presentation. One incentive to joining in Intro to Parallel Programming now is that students who are among the first to complete its units and problem sets have an opportunity to win a Kepler GPU. See the Udacity blog for details of this promotion sponsored by NVIDIA, as well as one from Amazon Web Services for GPU compute instances.

http://www.i-programmer.info/news/150-training-a-education/5428–free-online-computer-science-courses-starting-february.html

by Laird Harrison, KQED

The future of the University of California may look a lot like what’s in front of your eyes right now. Speaking to Marketplace’s Jeremy Hobson, the school’s departing president, Mark Yudof, said public universities may depend on online courses for their survival. “I think in the case of the University of California, in a few years, probably four, five, or six courses will be taken online on your way to an undergraduate degree,” said Yudof. “We’ll make more use of e-learning.” In January, Yudof announced his departure at the end of this academic year and he has been giving interviews about his experiences there.

http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2013/02/06/can-online-courses-save-the-university-of-california/

by Asha Omelian, GW Hatchet

Assistant professor Raluca Teodorescu will use a $10,000 grant to examine the effectiveness of online learning as the University prepares to roll out a set of massive open online courses. The funds given Teodorescu mark GW’s first investment to examine the effectiveness of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, which have splashed across higher education this year, offering ways for universities to brand themselves and show off innovative learning tools. The University started working last month toward launching a set of pilot MOOCs later this year, but some deans and program directors have doubted their academic credibility. With universities like Stanford, Northwestern and University of Illinois spending an estimated $50,000 for each free course, Teodorescu’s work will try to show if that hefty cost is worth the investment.

http://www.gwhatchet.com/2013/02/07/professor-studies-effectiveness-of-massive-open-online-courses/

By Olivia Moore, Stanford Daily

While massive open online course (MOOC) platforms such as Coursera and Udacity continue to gain traction in the world of online learning, outdated platforms such as iTunes U are still attracting millions of remote learners interested in Stanford courses. According to Brent Izutsu, Stanford’s director of digital media, over 1.35 million people have subscribed to a Stanford course on iTunes U. Stanford-produced content, including video and audio recordings of lectures and speeches, has been downloaded more than 64 million times. Izutsu said that the iTunes U program offers a valid alternative to programs like Coursera for remote students who want to take a Stanford course at their own pace. “A lot of the other platforms have people taking the courses together at the same time, which is a much more intense learning experience,” Izutsu said. “With iTunes U, you are working at your own pace and can invest as much or as little time as you want.”

http://www.stanforddaily.com/2013/02/05/itunes-u-still-competitive-in-online-education/

by edsurge

A new edtech accelerator, LearnLaunchX, which will be accepting applications starting February 20 for its first class in summer 2013. The terms are pretty standard: startups will get up to $18K in return for roughly 6% equity, and participate in a three-month program that includes workspace and classes and workshops from industry experts, along with basic legal, financial, and operation-related services. And since three makes a crowd, the city of Boston and edX have teamed up for BostonX, the “first-of-its-kind project that will provide the city’s residents with access to courses, internships job training and services, as well as locations for edX students to socialize.” The focus currently appears to be on adult learners as pilots will roll out in local community centers to provide access to online classes and career-oriented skills development services.

https://www.edsurge.com/n/2013-02-05-boston-annoucnes-new-edtech-incubator-and-city-wide-online-learning-project

by the University of Rochester

Eric Fredericksen has been appointed associate vice president of online learning at the University of Rochester. In this new role, Fredericksen will provide leadership for the exploration of online learning initiatives across the University. His appointment is effective immediately. Fredericksen, a national leader in online education, brings research credentials to the post, serving as the co-principal investigator and administrative officer for three multi-year, multi-million dollar grants on Asynchronous Learning Networks from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He was twice recognized by the Sloan Foundation; receiving the Sloan Award for Excellence in Faculty Development for Online Teaching and the Sloan Award for Excellence in Institution-Wide Online Education. His work also received the EDUCAUSE Award for Systemic Progress in Teaching and Learning. He was recently elected to the board of directors for the Sloan Consortium and also serves on the advisory board for enterprise learning at New York University.

http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=5502

By Whitney Bryen, Colorado Daily Camera

The University of Colorado’s faculty and administration is discussing options for improving their online learning system after recent outages kept students from completing assignments. The system, Desire2Learn (also known as D2L), has been unreliable this semester. The company’s attempt to upgrade caused several outages over the past three weeks, affecting hundreds of institutions worldwide. Last week, an outage left students and faculty without access to the site for nearly three days. The problem was fixed and all customers were up and running by Friday, said Virginia Jamieson, D2L’s senior director of corporate communications, in an email Monday. Jamieson was not available for further comment on Monday.

http://www.dailycamera.com/news/ci_22518726/after-d2l-outages-cu-boulder-considering-options

By David Mildenberg, Businessweek

Most public universities around the country are charging roughly the same tuition for their booming online programs even though the costs are typically far lower. The universities are using the revenue to offset state budget cuts and pressure from governors and legislators to lower costs. Once a course has about 30 students enrolled, “each additional online student is added at a fraction of the cost,” said Bobbitt, now president of the University of Arkansas System. “If you can bring things to scale, you can achieve pretty significant revenue.” Most public universities spend $3,000 to $12,000 annually per online student, depending on the program’s size and level of services, said Robert Lytle, co-head of the education practice at Boston-based Parthenon Group, which helps universities with business planning.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-02-04/internet-tuition-helps-public-universities-offset-budget-cuts

By Katie Kormanik, EdSource

The SJSU-Udacity pilot statistics course began last week with more than 3,000 students registered. In regular MOOCs, around 5 to 10 percent complete the courses (this still equates to tens of thousands of students earning certificates for completing popular MOOCs like Udacity’s Computer Science 101, but this percentage does not include the additional tens of thousands who benefited from pieces of the course and who were not intent on completing the whole thing). With this pilot program, we hope that completion rates will be equal to or better than those of the in-person versions of these courses. We will also analyze and compare student performance on the exams, which are identical to those taken by traditional in-class students. We are continuously improving the courses as we receive feedback, but we still have a long way to go before we can judge their effectiveness with certainty. This will be a powerful learning experience for everyone involved.

http://www.edsource.org/today/2013/udacitys-statistics-course-to-offer-insights-into-online-learning/26687#.URAUDr9EFwI

By Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed

Maybe it was inevitable that one of the new massive open online courses would crash. After all, MOOCs are being launched with considerable speed, not to mention hype. But MOOC advocates might have preferred the collapse of a course other than the one that was suspended this weekend, one week into instruction: “Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application.” Technology and design problems are largely to blame for the course’s problems. And many students are angry that a course about online education — let alone one offered by the Georgia Institute of Technology — wouldn’t have figured out the tech issues in advance, or been able to respond quickly once they became evident. Many of the problems related to the course’s use of Google Docs to sign up for group discussions.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/04/coursera-forced-call-mooc-amid-complaints-about-course

by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

There’s no homework, no tuition and no tests. No credit, either. But now anyone with access to the web can become a college student. In February, West Virginia University is launching a series of free online courses taught by professors. The experiment follows a national trend, and the courses are open to anyone anywhere. The only requirements are an Internet connection and an eagerness to learn something new. The Charleston Daily Mail says the one-week courses start Mondays with “Learning to Cope with our Robot Overloads.” The first batch focus on technology and social media, which communications professor Nick Bowman says are logical topics for online learners.

http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/67b1075e2c354ecb97c0560d5ae4ffa2/WV–Online-Learning

by AAP

Students produce higher quality work with access to high-speed broadband as part of their schooling, a new report says. The report, 21st Century Teaching Strategies for a Highly Connected World, drew on the experiences of 60 teachers at three schools connected to the national broadband network (NBN) – PLC Armidale, the TAFE teacher training institute at Armidale, and Willunga High School in South Australia. “Students who used to hand in C-grade work are now producing A-grade work,” Ms Reimann said. And 86 per cent said access to super quick broadband would improve how lessons were delivered. “We found that online, collaborative learning supported by fast, ubiquitous broadband is motivating our children to become even more engaged and successful in the subjects they learn,” ideasLAB assistant director Richard Olsen said.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-/latest/16056370/students-boost-learning-via-fast-broadband/

By Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Fair use and electronic course reserves are back in court. A keenly watched copyright case that pitted three academic publishers against Georgia State University has entered the appeals phase, with a flurry of filings and motions this week and more expected soon. One surprise motion came from the U.S. Department of Justice, which requested more time to consider filing an amicus brief either in support of the publishers or in support of neither party. The possibility that the government might weigh in triggered speculation and anxiety among some observers, including academic librarians worried that the Justice Department could sabotage educational fair use if it sides with the publishers against the university. A spokesman for the department told The Chronicle it had no comment at this time.

http://chronicle.com/article/PublishersLibrary-Groups/136995/

By Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed

Free online courses don’t lead to college credit, at least not directly. But students can use free course content from providers like the Saylor Foundation and Education Portal to study for “challenge exams,” probably the fastest and most inexpensive way to earn credits.

The examinations, like those offered by Excelsior College and the College Board’s College Level Examination Program (CLEP), are designed to test whether students grasp the concepts that would be taught in a conventional classroom version of general education courses. In that sense, they combine elements of both competency-based education and prior-learning assessment. Last year, about 18,000 people took Excelsior exams.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/04/free-online-course-providers-pair-credit-bearing-exams

by Katie Lepi, Edudemic

Distance learning has a surprisingly long tradition of flexibility. Though distance learning has gained most of its support in the past ten years or so, the infographic below tracks its growth from pre-revolutionary America to 21st Century Britain, where almost 400,000 students are currently engaged in distance learning courses. From lectures sent via phonograph and radio broadcast, to degrees delivered in the digital age, its evolution – and its reach – is staggering. Full-time professionals, housewives and husbands, teenagers, pensioners… members of all of these groups have felt the benefit of a distance learning course.

http://edudemic.com/2013/02/united-kingdoms-history-of-distance-learning/

by Jeff Dunn, Edudemic

The basic idea behind online learning is simple: enable more people to learn for less money. While the mission of empowering students of all ages is a noble one, it’s not always easy to make happen. Online learning is downright difficult for many and you have to really want to do it. Aside from that, it’s still a big time commitment and you’re going to want to know exactly what you’re going to get out of any online program before starting. Knowing that there are these challenges, what are some of the benefits? A new infographic from Online Degree Programs lays out some of the classic examples of what we should know about online learning. For example, what are the 5 ways online learning enhances productivity? How exactly does it reduce the cost of education?

http://edudemic.com/2013/02/how-online-learning-is-being-used-to-enhance-education/

By KATE PICKLES, Edinburgh Evening News

For stargazing students, it’s a course which is proving to be out of this world. Classes in “astrobiology and the search for extra-terrestrial life” are among six modules which have seen more than 300,000 new enrolments at Edinburgh University – each taking in lessons from the comfort of their own home. The institution’s free remote learning courses have proved an international hit, with the number of people signing up rising by 50 per cent in just two months. Professor Charles Cockell said the response to his lectures in the hunt for aliens had left him overwhelmed. He said: “I think people are interested in the history of life on Earth and whether there could be life elsewhere, but I was surprised by the response.

http://www.scotsman.com/edinburgh-evening-news/latest-news/remote-learning-course-on-alien-life-proves-popular-1-2773190