Online Learning Update

by Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed

By Meris Stansbury, eCampus News

New study reveals retention rates are all about how students perceive time. There are many ‘practical’ reasons why a student would pick an online course over an onsite course: money, time constraints, travel time, and supplementing education rather than obtaining a full degree. But a new study reveals that one of the major reasons for dropout rates in online learning has a lot to do with the psycho-social profile of the student. It’s an intrapsychological factor called temporal perspective (TP) and it’s pretty much the glass half-full/half-empty scenario, mixed in with some other perceptions. And, say researchers Margarida Romero and Mireia Usart from ESADE, it’s a major reason why many online classes have low retention rates.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/online-students-perception-298/

by Forbes

Recently, Franco took the plunge into the online learning world partnering with Skillshare.com to create a class teaching the next generation of filmmakers the basics of screenwriting. The class is called “Introduction to Screenwriting for Short Films” and it’s available for $25.00. Already over 2,100 people have signed up for it. As part of the class, students have to write an 8-minute screenplay adapted from one of three works selected by Franco. In the following interview, Franco talks about how he originally broke into his industry and formed his company, why he created an online course, the importance of education in his life, how the entertainment industry has changed and his top three tips for success.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2014/06/20/james-franco-how-hes-using-the-internet-to-educate-his-industry/

by christian tams, Herald Scotland

But where are Moocs leading us? So far, there is little evidence of regular education being pushed aside. While experimenting with online courses, many Scottish universities have expanded on-campus teaching, especially at graduate level. It would seem Moocs are designed to complement, not replace traditional modes of education, and that is where they hold real promise. Online access education permits academics to engage with much larger groups of students. Prominent US courses on questions with broad mainstream appeal, such as Michael Sandel’s course on justice, perhaps the most successful so far, are taken by upwards of 100,000 participants.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/agenda-free-online-learning-has-massive-potential-to-open-and-expand-minds.24534073

By Dian Schaffhauser, THE Journal

Online instruction must become as nuanced as the institutions and high schools delivering it if it is to grow as a force in education, according to a new survey by the Boston Consulting Group. The management firm has identified five distinct types of students who take online courses; each type differs from the others based on the students’ expectations for their learning. The company also examined what schools need to do in order to expand their online programs to attract or retain more learners within each grouping.

http://thejournal.com/articles/2014/06/18/research-online-students-take-five-forms-each-calling-for-unique-offerings.aspx

by USC

The University of Southern California (USC) announced it will expand its course offerings for its popular Cyber Security program, part of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Informatics Program. These new courses will be offered online through USC’s top-ranked DEN@Viterbi program, allowing working cyber security professionals to continue full-time careers while pursuing advanced degrees via DEN@Viterbi’s state-of-the-art online delivery capabilities. The new courses that will be offered online include Distributed Systems and Network Security and Secure Systems Engineering, among the roster of online courses currently offered.

http://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwgeeks/article/University-of-Southern-California-Trains-Cyber-Security-Front-Lines-20140619#.U6Y2nZRdVp0

By Lindsey Clark, Daily Vidette (ISU)

More and more students are enrolling in online courses over the summer because they are convenient and flexible with different schedules. ISU is offering 263 online courses this summer. Online summer classes have been on the rise at Illinois State University and colleges across the country over the last few years. One of the biggest draws of digital classes is that they can help students get the credits they need no matter where their location or other responsibilities. “I believe that online summer courses have become increasingly popular because more online courses are being offered and students are more comfortable with the online learning environment,” Danielle Lindsey, ISU director of academic services, said.

http://www.videtteonline.com/index.php/2014/06/17/summer-online-courses-becoming-more-popular/

by Jeannie Borin, Huffington Post

College counseling professionals guide students through their admissions process on the telephone, through email, via fax, video-conferencing and Skype. Distance does not seem to be a factor in getting to know applicants. Online learning and countless virtual programs are growing rapidly with much success. Students are at ease with the distance format. Between personal web pages, social media, texts and emails, online communication is a comfort zone for most people and many students prefer communicating online.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeannie-borin/why-distance-college-counseling_b_5505333.html

by Tyler Kingkade, Huffington Post

Representatives from Arizona State University insist that the school’s new partnership with Starbucks was not struck to make up for budget cuts from the state legislature. Starbucks named ASU its exclusive partner in a new initiative in which the coffee giant will pay the entire cost of tuition for junior and senior years of online education with the university. Starbucks employees who work 20 hours or more a week are eligible. ASU Foundation Chief Executive Officer Rick Shangraw Jr. acknowledged the deal would raise revenue for the school, but it is not meant to compensate for state funding cuts.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/17/arizona-state-starbucks-revenue_n_5504122.html

by the Digital Journal

According to the third annual Online College Students report from The Learning House, Inc. and Aslanian Market Research, a large majority of students are earning their degree to improve their employment situation, and 80% of them have transfer credit to help them finish faster. “For institutions looking to expand their online footprint, it’s critical to communicate the right message to students,” said Dr. David Clinefelter, Chief Academic Officer at Learning House and coauthor of the report. “While overall college enrollment is declining, the growth of online degrees continues,” said Carol Aslanian, Senior Vice President of Aslanian Market Research and coauthor of the report. “Offering the degrees students want, accepting transfer credits and streamlining the enrollment process are all key indicators for students when choosing an online degree program.”

http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1992252

by Think-Act

As e-learning becomes more affordable and more accessible, education expert Dr. Katrin Vernau talks about how companies can support online learning among employees. The recent years have been a fertile time for online learning. It is steadily transforming education, and this phenomenon has now spilled over to businesses. Today many e-learning enrollees are mid-career professionals who want to sharpen specific skills. “Online education has the potential to significantly change the way we learn. Online technologies combined with social media influence demand and supply in the education sector. This gives rise to new business models and new opportunities for life-long learning within the company,” said Dr. Katrin Vernau, a Partner at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. Take, for example, the German software corporation SAP, which recently expanded its massive open online course that formerly focused on software development to now include courses for business learners.

http://www.think-act.com/blog/2014/online-learning-gains-ground-in-companies/

by Stephen Ibaraki, Canadian IT Managers Blog

What are some controversies in your field and why?

“….Deep learning is very exciting and one of the confusions in the discipline is that the term ‘deep learning’ encompasses really two ideas. The first idea is called Supervised Learning in which if you have a lot of labeled data, these algorithms are fantastic at soaking up the labels to make accurate predictions….But there’s a second, not really unrelated body of ideas that also goes by the term deep learning that is very different, which is: ‘can you get a piece of software to watch YouTube or read text on the internet or listen to audio for hours on end and without you telling it anything or tagging or labeling any data and have it figure it out for itself?’….I think the second unsupervised learning, learning from unlabeled or untagged data is maybe most human-like. I think most humans learn primarily from unlabeled data and I think that this unsupervised learning idea has tremendous potential for letting us make a lot of progress in machine perception….”

http://blogs.technet.com/b/cdnitmanagers/archive/2014/06/16/chat-with-andrew-ng-co-founder-coursera-director-stanford-artificial-intelligence-lab-world-renowned-top-ranking-distinguished-researcher-innovator-and-entrepreneur.aspx

By Andrew Joseph Pegoda, Inside Higher Ed

Some will immediately say this is nothing more than a semantics debate.

Pedagogy: the methods and practice of teaching children.

Andragogy: the methods and practice of teaching adults.

So the question becomes: at what point is a student no longer a child, but an adult? There is no hard-and-fast rule, but for our purposes here, any college student is an adult. Andragogy, a concept dating to the 1960s and Malcolm Knowles, is important because it recognizes that adult learners are different and that these differences are extremely important. And its importance, as a body of knowledge and approach in and of itself, is profound and vastly under-recognized.

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2014/06/17/essay-questions-use-term-pedagogy-describe-ideas-regard-college-teaching#sthash.B4gpCnT7.dpbs

by Michael Moran, HR Magazine

The way we design and structure training courses is in a state of flux as we move into the e-learning era and L&D professionals add “social” to the blend. Today a training course is likely to be a sophisticated, self-managed online programme and when we add a social element we enable a collaborative learning platform. Learning is most effective when students are encouraged to think and talk together, to discuss ideas, question, analyse and solve problems, without the mediation of a teacher. So ‘collaborative learning’ is an umbrella phrase covering a range of approaches involving input from students and tutor. The tutor seeks to create an environment where learners are able to work collaboratively with opportunities to share emerging ideas and understandings. The aim is to stimulate the development of autonomy, responsibility and creativity by engendering meaningful communication and co-operative effort.

http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hro/features/1144811/collaborative-learning

by Mohamed Tawfik, et al; International Journal of Online Engineering

The increasing adoption of remote laboratories in education along with the shift from eLearning 2.0 towards eLearning 3.0, have demanded several considerations in their implementation and delivery format. In response to these needs, this contribution introduces a novel model, Laboratory as a Service (LaaS), for developing remote laboratories as independent component modules and implementing them as a set of loosely-coupled services to be consumed with a high level of abstraction and virtualization. LaaS aims to tackle the common concurrent challenges in remote laboratories developing and implementation such as inter-institutional sharing, interoperability with other heterogeneous systems, coupling with heterogeneous services and learning objects, difficulty of developing, and standardization. Beyond the academic context, LaaS will facilitate the incorporation of remote laboratories in the ecosystem of the ubiquitous smart things surrounding us, which increases everyday with the approaching Web of Things (WoT) and artificial intelligence era. This, in turn, will create a breeding ground for online control, experimentation, and discovery—in either formal or informal context and with neither temporal nor geographical constraints.

http://online-journals.org/index.php/i-joe/article/view/3654

By Meris Stansbury, eCampus News

Cloud-technology-institutions Cloud computing is nothing new, but how higher education institutions are using the technology has certainly become innovative. By using data storage for everything from student loan information to class schedules, having an ease of sharing between universities, and moving critical systems to better implement BYOD practices, higher education is quickly becoming the leaders in cloud technology…but what are some specifics in how they use it? “The reality for IT in higher education is that the overall environment continues to increase in complexity with issues such as BYOD,” says Vivántech. “Limited resources at private colleges and reduced state allocations at public institutions result in calls for IT departments to do more with same or less budget.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/cloud-it-institutions-295/

by Online Colleges

Twitter has caught fire across many professional fields as well as personally, but it seems to be in the beginning stages in the realm of higher education. The creative ways Twitter users have incorporated microblogging has become inspirational, so the recent trend of using Twitter at college, including at online colleges, is sure to keep evolving into an ever more impressive tool. Make sure you don’t get left behind by incorporating some of these educational and fun ways that Twitter can be used in the college classroom.

http://www.onlinecolleges.net/50-ways-to-use-twitter-in-the-college-classroom/

by Ken Stone, Times of San Diego

Many colleges are racing to expand their online course offerings — for purposes of revenue, status and extending their mission. MiraCosta College likes it for a more prosaic reason: real estate. “One of the reasons we are going in this direction is because of access,” said Carlos Lopez, dean of the Mathematics and Sciences Department. “We simply do not have sufficient space to accommodate all of the growth we’ve experienced and expect to experience.” On Friday, the district with Oceanside and Encinitas campuses announced it secured state approval to significantly expand its online course offerings. These would join classes under the umbrella of CyberCosta.

http://timesofsandiego.com/education/2014/06/13/packed-to-the-gills-miracosta-college-okd-for-more-online-classes/

by Sean Hougan, Lambda

We’ve reviewed the associative and cognitive perspectives of e-learning pedagogy in the two previous posts of this series. In this final post, we’ll take a look at the situative perspective. This perspective sees learning as directly linked to real life situations, social participation, and interpersonal relationships—learning by making topics meaningful through social practice. Situative teaching methods involve imitation, modeling, and collaborative construction of knowledge. In an online environment, this depends heavily on social platforms.

http://www.lambdasolutions.net/blog/2014/06/e-learning-pedagogy-situative-perspective-part-3/