Online Learning Update

By Nick Clunn, Tech Page One

Massive open online courses, or MOOCs, are increasingly multilingual, and two of the largest providers of the free massive open online courses recently announced international initiatives — in Latin America and the Middle East — that could greatly expand the global reach of the sensation. Coursera has partnered with the Carlos Slim Foundation to deliver more courses in Spanish to Mexico and beyond, and edX is teaming up with a Jordanian group that will use its platform to host a MOOC portal for the Arabic-speaking world.

http://techpageone.dell.com/industries2/education/moocs-many-languages-lead-expansion/#.UwyZ7ONdVpU

By Leonard Waks, eCampus News

How will MOOC-based learning aid learners in entering and performing in the workplace? We may imagine MOOC-based learning to serve as a qualification in two ways: let’s call them the (1) certificate, (2) credit routes. On the first, MOOC aggregations of certificates themselves are offered as significant job qualifications on a par with, or as an accepted substitute for, college and university degrees. I discussed this option in my last post. course-credit-moocsOn the second, the certificates will be accepted for college and university credit, and thus become (like conventional courses) components of degree pathways where degrees serve as qualifications.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/course-credits-mooc-211/?

By Jaccii Barmer, eCampus News

These 10 Apple and Android apps can help keep students engaged, and save educators time. Incorporating apps into online learning can keep students motivated and give them easy access to course material and notes. Here are 10 presentation apps that offer educators a way to keep students interested.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/technologies/apple-android-apps-444/

By Denny Carter, eCampus News

It’s not so much that colleges and universities included in a recent survey had under-funded mobile technology initiatives. Many didn’t have a mobile presence at all. While many schools have had mobile websites since the late-2000s, more than 70 percent of Pennsylvania and New Jersey colleges surveyed by brand marketing firm Princeton Partners did not have a mobile presence, while half of the campuses surveyed that had a mobile presence showed major deficiencies. The problems with shortcomings in a college’s mobile website is obvious to anyone familiar with the way students use smart phones and tablets. About six in 10 students surveyed in the Princeton Partners report said they were “unlikely to ever return to a website if they had trouble viewing it on their mobile device.”

http://www.ecampusnews.com/featured/featured-on-ecampus-news/mobile-college-229/

by Richard M. Felder, Tomorrow’s Professor

Sometimes at the end of a workshop, a participant suffering from information overload asks, “If I want to try just one thing you told us about, what should it be?” My answer is always active learning. For those who came in late, that means engaging students in course-related activities in class other than watching and listening to the instructor. They may be asked to answer a question, begin a problem solution or derivation or figure out the next step, explain a concept, interpret an observation, brainstorm a list, predict the outcome of an experiment, or any of a hundred other things.

http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/enewsletter.php?msgno=1309

by Thomas L. Friedman, NY Times

Beginning March 2, Professor Hossam Haick will teach the first massive open online course, or MOOC, on nanotechnology in Arabic. What’s more interesting, though, he explained to me the other day over breakfast is some of the curious email he’s received from students registering for his MOOC from all over the Arab world. Their questions include: Are you a real person? Are you really an Arab, or are you an Israeli Jew speaking Arabic, pretending to be an Arab? That’s because Haick is an Israeli Arab from Nazareth and will be teaching this course from his home university, the Technion, Israel’s premier science and technology institute, and the place we were having breakfast was Tel Aviv. His course is titled Nanotechnology and Nanosensors – online at www.coursera.org/course/nanosar – and is designed for anyone interested in learning about Haick’s specialty: “novel sensing tools that make use of nanotechnology to screen, detect, and monitor various events in either our personal or professional life.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/opinion/friedman-breakfast-before-the-mooc.html

by Erman Yukselturk, et al; EURODL

This study examined the prediction of dropouts through data mining approaches in an online program. The subject of the study was selected from a total of 189 students who registered to the online Information Technologies Certificate Program in 2007-2009. The data was collected through online questionnaires (Demographic Survey, Online Technologies Self-Efficacy Scale, Readiness for Online Learning Questionnaire, Locus of Control Scale, and Prior Knowledge Questionnaire). The collected data included 10 variables, which were gender, age, educational level, previous online experience, occupation, self efficacy, readiness, prior knowledge, locus of control, and the dropout status as the class label (dropout/not). In order to classify dropout students, four data mining approaches were applied based on k-Nearest Neighbour (k-NN), Decision Tree (DT), Naive Bayes (NB) and Neural Network (NN). These methods were trained and tested using 10-fold cross validation. The detection sensitivities of 3-NN, DT, NN and NB classifiers were 87%, 79.7%, 76.8% and 73.9% respectively. Also, using Genetic Algorithm (GA) based feature selection method, online technologies self-efficacy, online learning readiness, and previous online experience were found as the most important factors in predicting the dropouts.

http://www.eurodl.org/?article=616

by Katie Blot, Blackboard Blog

Blackboard is a founding member of The Badge Alliance, a new network of organizations with a primary focus to grow, sustain and further promote an open badging ecosystem. Digital badges are flexible, open, and portable symbols of an accomplishment, skill, competency, or interest. Learners earn badges from many different types of providers—often via blended or fully online courses—when they complete specific criteria designed to show competency in a given area. Badge achievements can be added to online resumes, social media profiles, personal websites, and job sites so that the knowledge learners have acquired can become—literally and visibly—part of their identities. Digital badging has risen as a “common currency” that transcends multiple learning venues, offering the ability to demonstrate knowledge acquired from a variety of sources such as MOOCs, professional development courses and workplace training and allows students to display their mastery in skills no matter where they were acquired.

http://blog.blackboard.com/shaping-future-education-founding-member-badge-alliance/