Online Learning Update

by Stephanie Wang, Indianapolis Star

Bursting onto the scene last summer, MOOCs are gaining momentum as national and state leaders re-evaluate higher education. Some herald MOOCs as a revolutionary way to target major learning concerns such as affordability and accessibility. But even as Ball State, some elite universities and Big Ten institutions experiment with the courses, other Indiana colleges are taking a wait-and-see attitude. “MOOCs are clearly a very interesting technical phenomenon,” said Gerry McCartney, Purdue University’s chief information officer. “But they’re a marketing device. They’re not an educational device. Not in their current form.” Still, Indiana educators are watching the fad very closely. At the very least, MOOCs could be catalysts for change.

http://www.indystar.com/article/20130306/NEWS04/303060094/Free-online-courses-help-colleges-bring-education-masses?nclick_check=1

BY LEVI STEINSTAFF, the Daily Orange

Twenty years after it started offering online courses, the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University has introduced its first massive open online course. “The iSchool has been at the forefront of online education for two decades,” said Jeffrey Stanton, senior associate dean of the iSchool and professor teaching the online course. “2013 is literally the 20th anniversary of the offering of the first online course.” The free course, called “Introduction to Data Science,”was made available to the first 500 interested students for the spring semester. MOOCs are classes taught online to large numbers of students with minimal involvement by professors.

http://dailyorange.com/2013/03/su-launches-first-massive-open-online-course/

by the Associated Press

A new, completely Web-based, distance-learning initiative was launched Monday by Louisiana State University. Administrators hope that the LSU Online program will increase enrollment, generate revenue and build the university’s “brand” nationwide. The initial launch offers graduate students a choice of three master’s degree-level programs in business administration, construction management and human resource leadership and development. Two more degree programs in higher education administration and educational leadership are expected to launch later this year, possibly in May.

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/viewart/20130305/NEWS01/130305005/LSU-now-available-online

by D.G. Martin, Salisbury Post

Mention online education around some of my friends, and you will get an emotional reaction. Some senior university faculty members teach classes filled with several hundred students, and they worry that famous online lecturers could take their places. Others wonder if they can transfer their talents to the online market and, if so, how much compensation they can demand for their extra efforts. Public school advocates worry that private businesses will persuade decisionmakers to replace more expensive traditional classroom-based instruction with programs delivered to students’ computers. The result, they fear, will be high profits to the providers and a loss of hands-on support from classroom teachers and fellow students. Whatever our worries about online education, our state should brace for changes. Gov. Pat McCrory’s challenging remarks about the role of universities, discussion of further drastic cuts in the higher education budget, new proposals for education vouchers, consideration of approval for off-site, profit-making charter schools and a host of other possible “improvements” let everyone know that change, big change, is coming.

http://www.salisburypost.com/article/20130305/SP05/130309880/1012/dg-martin-online-education-can-be-a-good-tool

BY ANDREW ROUSH, Alcalde

The process of integrating online learning may not be simply a choice for major universities like UT. Students are “voting with their feet” by turning away from traditional classes in favor of online, according to Steven Mintz, executive director of the UT System’s Institute for Transformational Learning. “I want UT to be the national—maybe international—leader in this space,” Mintz says. His enthusiasm for blended and online learning has helped make UT a partner in edX, a move he views as not only necessary, but good for students and the University. “We have to do it,” he says, noting that faculty have driven the selection of the first, experimental online courses. Students will get personalized tools, and professors can more closely track success, moves that Mintz maintains will empower students. High production values and better use of class time are what administrators hope will draw students and professors to blended and online classes. A historian by training, Mintz sees UT’s role in the long-term. If a move to MOOCs, for example, is a part of the course of history, then UT should lead and help shape the trend for the better.

http://alcalde.texasexes.org/2013/03/new-online-courses-present-challenges-opportunities/

“The Digital Public Library of America will launch on April 18 after two and a half years of careful planning and preparation. The project known as DPLA is the first national effort that seeks to aggregate existing records in state and regional digital libraries so that they are searchable from a single portal. Up until now, the documents that tell the story of our nation’s history and cultural heritage have largely been siloed in state and local libraries, museums, and archives. Some institutions have the ability to digitize those valuable materials and put them online, but strained budgets mean that most do not.

http://dp.la

By Corrie Whitmer, the Penn

Indiana University of Pennsylvania generally calls it “Distance Education,” but you might know it better as “taking classes online.” IUP’s website offers students an anonymous quiz that they can take to determine if online education is “right for them.” The quiz asks the student whether they are “self-motivated” and if they can “learn independently.” “I think you need to be disciplined to take an online course,” O’Hara said. There isn’t a teacher checking up on you, she said, so you have to be able to motivate yourself to complete assignments.

http://www.thepenn.org/2010-11-news/2.20155/a-deeper-look-at-distance-education-1.3004690#.UTdDPdZRzU0

By Dan Cabrera in Best Practices Newsletter

Preserving the integrity of student learning assessment is as much of a priority for online courses as it is for traditional face-to-face instruction. Although there is concern that academic dishonesty or ‘cheating’ might be more likely to happen in an online setting, studies comparing face-to-face and online settings have yielded mixed results (Grijalva, Nowell, Kerkvliet, 2006; Lanier, 2006; Stuber-McEwen, Wiseley, Hoggatt, 2009) . Yet, a perception persists that challenges to preventing cheating are somewhat different in an online setting because faculty and students are physically separated from each other. This remoteness makes it certainly difficult to monitor various types of learning assessment activities.

http://facdevblog.niu.edu/onlinecheating

By Peter Farrell, Kyle Marino, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs Scribe

The primary obstacle of MOOCs for universities is adopting a business model and generating revenue. The regents and university administration will do something about it, but they are unsure how to fit it into a business model as MOOCs are free, Anderson added. UCCS is in the process of forging a tentative partnership with Coursera. CU Boulder is following in step. At the moment, the online program at UCCS has a handful of undergraduate programs that require a 60/60 split of in-person and online credits. It also offers several more master’s and certificate offerings. The undergraduate programs offered include health care, criminal justice, business and nursing. Some senior students would like to have seen more online courses offered by UCCS in the time they spent pursuing their undergraduate degrees.

http://www.uccsscribe.com/news/online-courses-draw-attention-from-administration-faculty-1.2814845#.UTkLhRyG32s

By Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Think the digital divide is behind us now that personal computers are ubiquitous? Consider the recent failure of an e-textbook effort in a wealthy school district outside of Washington, D.C. The e-textbooks used in the project, run by the Fairfax County Public Schools, worked only when students were online—and some features required fast connections. But it turns out that even in such a well-heeled region, many students did not have broadband access at home and were unable to do their homework, sparking complaints from parents that led the school system to approve the purchase of $2-million in printed textbooks for those who preferred a hard copy. As more colleges rush to offer free online courses in the name of providing educational access to all, it’s worth asking who might be left out for lack of high-speed Internet access to watch video lectures.

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Bandwith-Divide/137633/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

by David Ward, interim chancellor, State Journal

The old model of education is now supplemented by several creative alternatives in selected parts of our curriculums. The role of the classroom is being flipped on its head and reinvented through technology, online learning and more flexible approaches to education. This trend affecting higher education mirrors what we have seen in recent years with many longstanding institutions. Universities that understand how to create a variable experience for students will be best equipped to innovate and survive over the next decade and beyond. The urgency to rethink how students are educated at UW-Madison has been at the forefront of my tenure as interim chancellor. When I returned here a year and a half ago, I brought with me the experience I gained as president of the American Council on Education, where I became familiar with changing modes of higher learning, including those already well started here in Madison.

http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/opinion/column/guest/david-ward-online-courses-will-extend-uw-madison-to-more/article_9a20ec0a-82ba-11e2-89f6-0019bb2963f4.html

By Drew Faust and L. Rafael Reif, Boston Globe

IN 1837, the Massachusetts Board of Education devoted part of its first annual report to praising a recent classroom innovation called the blackboard. This “invaluable and indispensible” innovation enabled the “rapid and vivid communication of knowledge.” It created opportunities for teachers to engage learners in ways that had been unimaginable just a generation earlier. The same and more will be said of online learning tools. We are at the beginning of a technology-led revolution in pedagogy: Our innovation is not the blackboard, but instead an evolving suite of tools that allows interactive learning online. While one outcome of this revolution has rightly caught the world’s attention — the power to democratize access to education on a scale never seen in history — we are just as excited about the promise that these new tools hold for colleges and universities throughout the world.

http://bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/03/03/the-future-online-learning-and-residential-education/MRaKdvKFTtxC7nCA3yQhxL/story.html

By ANNE EISENBERG, NY Times

Eavesdropping technologies worthy of the C.I.A. can remotely track every mouse click and keystroke of test-taking students. Squads of eagle-eyed humans at computers can monitor faraway students via webcams, screen sharing and high-speed Internet connections, checking out their photo IDs, signatures and even their typing styles to be sure the test-taker is the student who registered for the class. The developing technology for remote proctoring may end up being as good — or even better — than the live proctoring at bricks-and-mortar universities, said Douglas H. Fisher, a computer science and computer engineering professor at Vanderbilt University who was co-chairman of a recent workshop that included MOOC-related topics. “Having a camera watch you, and software keep track of your mouse clicks, that does smack of Big Brother,” he said. “But it doesn’t seem any worse than an instructor at the front constantly looking at you, and it may even be more efficient.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/technology/new-technologies-aim-to-foil-online-course-cheating.html?_r=0

by Matthew Lynch, Huffington Post

The flexibility and convenience of online learning is well known but what is not as readily talked about is the way distance education promotes diversity of the college population. With less red tape than the traditional college format, online students are able to earn credits while still working full time, maintaining families and dealing with illnesses. Whether students take just one course remotely, or obtain an entire degree, they are able to take on the demands of college life more readily — leading to student population with more variety.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-lynch-edd/diversity-at-college-leve_b_2662898.html

by Katie Lepi, Edudemic

When we talk about digital learning and bringing technology into the classroom, we hope it has positive effects, right? Well, I should hope so. So let’s say you bring in a digital project-based lesson or two, encourage students to use Animoto, or just use a device in the classroom. If properly done, it’s easy to see positive effects. So where do you start? What kind of lessons actually lead to this holy grail that is ‘deeper’ learning? The 15 lessons in the infographic below (click the image to enlarge) are incredibly simple jumping-off points to bring a high-quality digital learning environment into your classroom without having to Google your brains out.

http://edudemic.com/2013/03/15-ways-digital-learning-can-lead-to-deeper-learning/

by Paul Glader, Edudemic

Jack Welch: There is a fascinating thing we are seeing. Our students, right now, want asynchronous learning. They don’t want synchronous learning. We thought it would be a good idea to have all students come in for a 3-day orientation before they start again. We got almost a 90% rejection (of that idea). They said the reason they are coming to our school is they want to learn on their own time. They have a family, jobs and lives. They don’t want to be going to meetings. Our gut feeling was to have them get together. They said, “What a lousy thing to do.” They have lives, children, obligations and bosses who want their work done. The reason they came to us is to get the skills but still be able to travel and go to meetings and things.

http://edudemic.com/2013/02/moocs-and-online-learning-jack-welch/

By Adi Robertson, the Verge

“Big ideas” conference TED has awarded its 2013 prize to Sugata Mitra, a longtime educational expert and proponent of “minimally invasive education.” The TED Prize is awarded every year to fund a project by its recipient, but in 2013, the award has been increased from $100,000 to $1 million. The money will help Mitra start the “School in the Cloud,” a lab in India where students can try out a variety of online learning tools and receive online mentoring. These “controlled experiments” will help test the effectiveness of different educational methods, most presumably focused on testing Mitra’s philosophy of self-organized teaching.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/27/4035596/ted-awards-1-million-prize-to-online-education-pioneer-sugata-mitra

By Mike Cassidy, Mercury News

With the class still in the early going I was about a week behind on my assignments, nearly flunking my first quiz and seriously contemplating dropping the class. So much for the old college try.But two things made me stick with it (at least up until now, with two more weeks to go) — My Coursera class called “Developing Innovative Ideas for New Companies” comes with a promise: If I can finish the course work and score at least 70 percent on my assignments, I’ll receive a statement of accomplishment. I want that statement. But more important than that, were the classmates I’ve encountered. Yeah, classmates. I’ve got a few, like 85,000 by the instructor’s count in week two of the course. Let’s just say the lecture hall would have been a little crowded in pre-Internet days. No we don’t gather together physically, but we are able to socialize, commiserate and help and encourage each other on a series of message boards. And it is from those message boards that I’ve found both my inspiration to press on and a spirit that points to the powerful potential these new courses have.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mike-cassidy/ci_22696060/cassidy-coursera-class-offers-peek-into-determination-student

By Matt Lee, BBC News

How university students do their studies has changed significantly in recent years with the growth in online learning. Instead of physically attending lectures or going to the library, they can download lesson plans and lecture notes to their laptop, have a Skype conversation with a lecturer and submit work online. With more universities now offering e-learning and MOOCs (massive open online courses) is there now a need for them to still have classrooms and a campus? The University of Warwick was one of 12 to sign up with a company called Futurelearn in December to enable them to offer free online degree-level courses and MOOCs to students around the world. The first of which in behavioural science will start in July.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-21615491

By TODD DVORAK, Associated Press

Thousands of Idaho students in public, private and charter schools big and small next fall will be able to log into math, physics and history classes provided by the Khan Academy, a growing content provider focused on making free education available to anyone, anywhere. With $1.5 million in startup money from the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation, Khan Academy content will be provided in 47 schools, making Idaho the nation’s first proving ground for a statewide implementation of the academy’s free educational content and teaching model.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Grant-helps-Idaho-schools-plug-into-online-classes-4318084.php

by Lisa A. Frasier, Sacramento State Hornet

Education plays a key part in society. More and more people are going to college to learn, to get better jobs or to enhance skills for a job they already have. Online classes are a growing part of the education system and are showing no signs of slowing down. An increase of online classes will help cut the impaction of majors on campus. Many students can’t get into certain programs because the seats are full. With an option to attend online courses, students can get the classes they need to graduate.

http://www.statehornet.com/opinion/online-classes-are-the-future/article_20bab62a-8067-11e2-a615-0019bb30f31a.html