Online Learning Update

BY LARS THORVALDSEN, Miami Herald

The American Association of University Professors says ownership of online courses, including MOOCs, is a pressing issue. Among the concerns are that institutions will change online courses created by professors and that professors will sign away their intellectual property rights to the courses they create. Doing so may have long-term consequences, as a professor might not be able to use a course after leaving his or her institution, the organization said.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/12/12/3812743/massive-online-courses-pose-possibilities.html

By Nicki Krawcyzk, B2C

It seems counterintuitive at first glance: learning marketing and creative skills like copywriting or graphic design online? Don’t those skills need an in-person teacher? Not only is that not the case—it can actually be the opposite. Marketing and creative proficiency are actually perfect skills to acquire in an elearning environment.

http://www.business2community.com/strategy/4-reasons-elearning-perfect-building-creative-skills-0710043#!pK7Cp

by Virtual College (UK)

A combination of face-to-face instruction and online training, otherwise known as blended learning, is the most effective form of education. This is according to Alex Williams, a course leader at Buckinghamshire New University who has pointed out the benefits of using online resources to aid classroom study. He argued in a post for Digital Arts Online that face-to-face time with a lecturer should be spent taking part in workshops and receiving personal feedback, while the internet is great for catching up on missed lectures and doing homework. “The beauty of an online lecture is if you don’t get it the first time, you just watch it again. In fact, you keep watching it until you do get it,” Mr Williams said.

http://www.virtual-college.co.uk/news/Blended-learning-the-most-effective-kind-newsitems-801670751.aspx

by Peter Wood, Fiscal Times

I’d like to see colleges and universities recover their proper selves after decades of misdirection. If the rise of online education promotes that spirit of self-reform, all the better. But I also see merit in most of the forms of online education taken on their own terms. They do some things extraordinarily well. As it happens, liberal education in the traditional sense is probably not destined to be among those things, but that simply means we should prepare for a “disaggregation” of higher education. Not everyone is happy with the prospect of that disaggregation. In my experience a great many academics have fierce loyalty to the notion that residential colleges and universities are first-tier institutions and online learning preys on those who don’t know better and gives them an inferior education. In any case, a new genre of academic writing has begun to emerge, exemplified by Andrew Delbanco’s College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be, in which scholars create a new apologetics for residential liberal arts education.

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/12/10/How-Online-Education-Can-Save-Our-Universities

by Montana State University

Montana State University’s online graduate courses for science teachers are now open for spring registration. The courses are all part of MSU Extended University’s National Teachers Enhancement Network (NTEN). Spring 2014 courses include offerings in the following departments: physics; earth science; land resources and environmental science; education, curriculum and instruction; and microbiology. Some courses are designed specifically for elementary-level teachers.

http://www.montana.edu/news/12326/msu-opens-spring-online-courses-for-science-teachers

by Christopher Brinton, et al; InfoDocket

Since social learning is a key element of scalable education in MOOCs and is done via online discussion forums, our main focus is in understanding forum activities. Two salient features of MOOC forum activities drive our research: 1. High decline rate: for all courses studied, the volume of discussions in the forum declines continuously throughout the duration of the course. 2. High-volume, noisy discussions: at least 30% of the courses produce new discussion threads at rates that are infeasible for students or teaching staff to read through. Furthermore, a substantial portion of the discussions are not directly course-related. We study user behavior in the courses offered by a major Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) provider during the summer of 2013.

http://www.infodocket.com/2013/12/10/new-research-paper-learning-about-social-learning-in-moocs/

By Ian Chant, Library Journal

Since the term was coined five years ago, massive open online courses, or MOOCs, have been a subject of much debate in educational circles. In their brief life span, the courses, in which up to many thousands of students can participate, have demonstrated the promise of new technology to democratize education by some and been declared failed experiments by others. MOOC professors, though, say that it’s too early to judge how MOOCs perform, and that after just a few years, even those in the know are still figuring out what MOOCs really are and what shape—or shapes—they’ll take in the future. Whatever MOOCs look like going forward, though, libraries—in the academic and public sphere alike—will play a key role in helping to determine their design and success. In just the few months since we looked in LJ at the MOOC environment (“Massive Open Opportunity,” LJ 5/1/13), the quickly moving field has evolved significantly.

http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2013/12/digital-content/opening-up/

by Anant Agarwal, Huffington Post

A specific example of unbundling content might be what my colleague from the University of California, Berkeley, Armando Fox, has called “SPOCs”: Small Private Online Course (like MOOC, another awkward acronym). With SPOCs, universities can license courses offered through edX or another MOOC provider and incorporate some of the online course material into their own on-campus course. This is just like using another scholar’s textbook; the only difference is that the content is delivered not through typeset ink on paper, but via a dynamic bit-mapped display. No one could have predicted the explosion of interest in MOOCs that has occurred in the past year. Nor can we predict where MOOC technology and research will lead us. But we can examine these innovations and collaborate on how best to use them to transform and re-imagine higher education. Success will lie in experimenting with these new concepts, along with many more we can now only begin to imagine.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anant-agarwal/unbundled-reimagining-higher-education_b_4414048.html

By Fred O’Connor, Computer World

Tyler Kresch isn’t turning to graduate school to help him change his job from tech sales to running a startup; instead he’s taking massive open online courses (MOOCs) to learn the IT skills necessary for that career move. Employers are receptive to hiring IT job candidates with MOOC educations, but education alone won’t result in a job offer. Projects that show how candidates who have used their tech skills are key.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9244648/IT_job_seekers_look_to_the_MOOC

by David Scott, the Age

When pressed on what the main issues confronting educators in the 21st century are, Deborah Howes is unequivocal in her response. “The biggest challenge in looking ahead is letting go of familiar habits preventing you from reaching other audiences that expect and need to learn in different ways.” Ms Howes, the Director of Digital Learning at New York’s iconic Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), is well placed to reflect on the future of education, particularly as it increasingly evolves – and involves – online. MoMA’s digital education offerings include seven fee-based courses (offered via their website) and, more recently, a free Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) offered via Coursera.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/voice/museums-moocs-and-moma-the-future-of-digital-education-realised-20131209-2z0cm.html

by the Davis Clipper

Learning from the faculty and students at Juilliard may have seemed an impossibility to most, but courses designed by the school are now being offered to Utah students at no cost, through Utah Connections Academy. Connections Academy, the parent company of UCA, is partnering with Juilliard eLearning to offer music courses for students from kindergarten through 12th grade, whether or not they are enrolled in the academy, according to a press release from UCA.

http://www.davisclipper.com/view/full_story/24164375/article-Online-course-offers-Juilliard-expertise?instance=home_news_1st_left

By Emma Lee, TechNode

TinyWorld is a social language acquisition site which aims to optimize user experience, the crucial factor for learning quality, with a perfect combination of technologies to facilitate online language sharing. The program is now seeking for funding on Indiegogo to support the radical approach to language learning and teaching. TinyWorld adopted a spate of measures to keep the users motivated during the tough language learning process. The service offers learning sources through a simple theme-based platform. Learners are asked to pick one attractive theme from the eight currently available ones and a language to start. All the course materials are created by real people to ensure that the things you have learned can solve daily communication problems. In addition, it also mixed the elements of larger massive open online courses with social networking features.

http://technode.com/2013/12/09/tinyworld-social-e-learning-platform-that-optimize-language-studying-experience-with-technology/

by Nicole Freeling and Judy Lin, UCLA Today

Soon, students from other UC campuses will have an opportunity to share that experience. Starting winter quarter, students at seven UC campuses — UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC Merced, UC Riverside and UC Santa Cruz — will be able to enroll in online courses offered at campuses other than their own. Shin’s class will be among the courses in spring quarter, when students at UC San Diego and UC Santa Barbara may be added to the list of participating campuses. Also being offered this spring is UCLA political science professor Susanne Lohmann’s online class, “Diversity, Disagreement and Democracy.”

http://today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/uc-wide-online-classes-249627.aspx

by Philip G Altbach, University World News

While academics who develop MOOC courses are no doubt motivated by a desire to do the best job possible and to cater to a wide audience, they are to a significant extent bound by their own academic orientations. Since the vast majority of material used comes from Western academic systems, examples used in science courses are likely to come from America or Europe because these countries dominate the literature and articles in influential journals, and are taught by well known professors from high profile universities. Modes of inquiry reflect the Western mainstream. While this knowledge base and pedagogical orientation no doubt reflect current ideas of good practice, they may not be the only approach to good scientific inquiry or content. The implications for developing countries are serious. MOOCs produced in the current centres of research are easy to access and inexpensive for the user, but may inhibit the emergence of a local academic culture, local academic content and courses tailored specially for national audiences.

http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=2013120517525882

by Best Colleges Online

$400 billion is spent annually in the U.S. on universities.  The $400 billion represents: more than the annual revenues of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter combined. Every educational institution wants a piece of that pie. Meantime, more than 10 million people are estimated to have enrolled in at least one MOOC. Check out this infographic for some relevant factoids.

http://www.bestcollegesonline.org/moocs/

By PATRICIA KITCHEN, Newsday

There’s help online for professionals on Long Island who are looking for tools to boost their career prospects. An increasingly popular batch of free or low-cost on-demand Web platforms, some with mobile apps for learning on the go, are helping people develop skills to stay relevant and employable, learn the ins and outs of setting up a blog or a business, or find ways to manage time and energy more effectively. These resources — with names like creativeLIVE, Skillshare, Udemy and Coursera — offer training in anything from Twitter basics to Rock Poster Design to Statistical Molecular Thermal Dynamics, right along with essential computer-age skills such as how to use the ubiquitous spreadsheet program Excel.

http://www.newsday.com/classifieds/jobs/online-educational-tools-help-boost-career-prospects-1.6556410

By Sasha Zients, Duke Chronicle

Even as online courses move forward at Duke, some faculty members still have misgivings. At the Arts and Sciences Council’s last meeting of 2013, Chair Thomas Robisheaux, Fred W. Schaffer professor of history, opened up the floor to members to express their views on the University’s venture into online education.  Though some professors—including those already teaching online classes—see the benefits, others feel pressured to incorporate online elements. Faculty concurred, however, on the idea that online education needed to be better defined. “We need to know what we’re talking about—what these things look like and how they are framed in order to have these kinds of discussions,” said Cary Moskovitz, director of writing in the disciplines for the Thompson Writing Program.

http://www.dukechronicle.com/articles/2013/12/06/online-edu-still-garnering-mixed-responses-arts-and-sciences-council

by Harvard Magazine

Reporting to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) at length for the first time since he was appointed vice provost for advances in learning last September, Peter K. Bol highlighted shifts in the landscape for the much-publicized massive open online courses (MOOCs). At the December 3 faculty meeting, Bol noted that:

• People who register for free MOOCs, like those offered on edX, differ from conventional students, and are not using them like conventional courses.
• Students enrolled in higher-education institutions seem disinclined to take advantage of not-for-credit MOOCs.
• Faculty members are increasingly interested in using edX technology to produce “modules”—short units covering a single subject, background information, a problem set, or elements of a larger course—rather than entire courses, which entail an enormous investment of their time and energy.

http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/12/harvard-mit-online-education-views-changing

By KATELYN GAGNON, Concordia Monitor

It’s impossible for me to get through my day without using some form of technology, whether it is school-based or purely for entertainment purposes. I wake up to the alarm on my phone, open my computer to read the news and check my email to see if my professors have sent out anything pertaining to class that day. Almost all of the work submitted to my professors is online, meaning that having a laptop is an essential part of my life as a college student. It’s what I use for homework, research, shopping and job hunting. The only thing I don’t use my computer for is taking notes in class. Having the internet at my fingertips during lecture proves to be very distracting. There’s a lot of technology my generation takes for granted, but one thing I know I’ll never take for granted is my Kindle e-reader. Not only do I have access to my favorite books at the touch of a button, but I’m able to purchase several of my textbooks at less than half the cost of buying the actual book. What more can a college student ask?

http://www.concordmonitor.com/home/9504031-95/my-turn-online-all-the-time

BY BRIAN SHUSTER, Wired

Virtual worlds promise to deliver the best aspects of both real-world classrooms and online distance learning into a single platform. With tools that provide avatars that represent the educators and the students, voice and video capabilities, powerpoint and other collaborative whiteboard technologies and group and private messaging chat, educators are finding that the newest generation of virtual worlds can simplify the lecture and presentation process, allow students to ask/answers questions to their teacher or each other (without interrupting the lecture), socialize and learn in a very streamlined manner. All of this is done with the convenience and cost efficiency of distance learning.

http://www.wired.com/insights/2013/12/virtual-reality-and-learning-the-newest-landscape-for-higher-education/

By TAMAR LEWIN, NY Times

To ease the way for students grappling with certain key concepts, professors at Davidson College in North Carolina will design online lessons for high school students in Advanced Placement courses in calculus, physics and macroeconomics and make them widely available through the College Board and edX, a nonprofit online education venture. “We joined edX in May, specifically because many of our faculty wanted to work on this Advanced Placement project,” said Carol Quillen, the president of Davidson. “They see kids come into their introductory classes, year after year after year, and get stuck on certain concepts, like the Phillips curve in macroeconomics, and they wanted to create some interactive online units that teachers could use to help teach the hardest ideas.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/education/professors-in-deal-to-design-online-lessons-for-ap-classes.html?hpw&rref=education&_r=0