Online Learning Update

by Tristan Anwyn, Australia Business Review

Time was when the best graduates and brightest minds in any given field weren’t available to employers until after graduation. After graduation, students joined the workforce with a lot of ideas, but not much in the way of practical experience. Online education is changing that by offering much more flexibility not only to students but to the businesses that employ them. Australian businesses can find high-caliber employees who have used online learning to study while employed, combining the best of both worlds in terms of academic prowess and experience in their field. Online education offers employees the chance to engage with lifelong learning, constantly updating their skills and knowledge, which can only be good news for the businesses that employ them. Offering distance education to employees is also a strong selling point for employers who want to show commitment to staff development and well-being.

http://www.businessreviewaustralia.com/technology/1257/Why-Online-Education-Is-Good-News-for-Australian-Employers

By Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology

In 2013, 7.1 million higher education students took at least one online course — a 6.1 percent increase over the previous year, according to a report from the Online Learning Consortium (the recently renamed Sloan Consortium). While many colleges and universities do a good job offering faculty development programs for online teaching, they can’t possibly keep up with that kind of growth. The demand for tips and best practices for online instruction is seemingly insatiable. When we published online education specialist Paul Beaudoin’s “6 Ways to Be a Better Online Teacher” a few months ago, it quickly became one of the top three most-read articles on our Web site this year. For this month’s issue, we asked Paul to write a follow-up piece: “Motivate and Engage Online Learners All Semester Long.”

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/08/07/learning-to-teach-online.aspx

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

When Julie Schell makes a presentation on innovation in teaching and learning, she likes to share a photograph of college classroom from the 1800s. Compared to a typical classroom today, it’s hard to see any substantial differences. The lesson: Educators “need to change how we teach students,” she believes. It’s not just about cranking out video lectures: Pedagogy, she said, “must drive classroom decisions.” To ensure that pedagogy stays at the forefront of innovation in the classroom, Schell shared two favorite techniques for flipping.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/08/13/2-great-techniques-for-the-flipped-classroom.aspx

By Graeme Wood, The Atlantic

On a Friday morning in April, I strapped on a headset, leaned into a microphone, and experienced what had been described to me as a type of time travel to the future of higher education. I was on the ninth floor of a building in downtown San Francisco, in a neighborhood whose streets are heavily populated with winos and vagrants, and whose buildings host hip new businesses, many of them tech start-ups. In a small room, I was flanked by a publicist and a tech manager from an educational venture called the Minerva Project, whose founder and CEO, the 39-year-old entrepreneur Ben Nelson, aims to replace (or, when he is feeling less aggressive, “reform”) the modern liberal-arts college. Minerva is an accredited university with administrative offices and a dorm in San Francisco, and it plans to open locations in at least six other major world cities.

http://qz.com/249771/this-online-school-may-replace-modern-literal-arts-colleges/

By LINDSAY GELLMAN, Wall Street Journal

Then there are online courses, which come in many flavors. iTunes U offers free educational content, including lectures, from colleges and universities. Khan Academy (Khanacademy.org), a nonprofit, is a free platform for original tutorial videos and assessments, and users earn virtual badges for mastering a given subject. Codecademy (Codecademy.com) offers free, hands-on online programming courses and exercises. Coursera (Coursera.org), a for-profit online educator, partners with colleges, universities and other institutions to offer courses that are free to take, but there is typically associated course work—graded via machine or by peers—and there might be a charge for an optional course-end certificate. Know your industry—and know when you need to have a skill officially certified, or when informal learning might be sufficient or even preferable.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/dont-let-your-education-end-at-graduation-1408234349

By KRWG NEWS

With more and more college courses transitioning into online formats, New Mexico State University is working to ensure the quality of its online classes matches the quality of those delivered inside the classroom. To reach this goal, NMSU’s Online Course Improvement Program (OCIP) began in 2009 as a partnership between the Associated Students of New Mexico State University/Student Technology Advisory Committee and the College of Extended Learning.

http://krwg.org/post/nmsu-works-elevate-online-courses

By Denny Carter, eCampus News

Thanks to MIT, modularization could soon be an oft-repeated phrase in online education. Members of the MIT task force, who were asked to examine ways a college education could become more accessible, more affordable, and more effective, pointed to the concept of “modularization” as a key to improving the traditional web-based class model and the nontraditional massive open online course (MOOC). The task force suggested breaking courses into modules — or learning units meant to be studied in sequence but separately. This approach would mimic a person’s ability to purchase bits and pieces of an artist’s music from Apple iTunes, they said.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/online-courses-itunes/

By Meris Stansbury, eCampus News

It’s a perfect storm of economic factors and available technology that’s making competency-cased online education the real disruptive innovation for colleges and universities, say Michelle Weise, senior research fellow of Higher Education for the Clayton Christensen Institute, and Clayton Christensen, co-founder of the Institute and the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. “Workforce training, competency-based learning, and online learning are clearly not new phenomena,” explains Weise. “But online competency-based education is revolutionary because it marks the critical convergence of multiple vectors: the right learning model, the right technologies, the right customers, and the right business model.”

http://www.ecampusnews.com/technologies/online-competency-college-587/

By Denny Carter, eCampus News

Coursera recently sought to answer that question, drilling down into enrollment data to see which classes, exactly, women were taking on the popular Coursera platform. Food and nutrition topped the list of Coursera classes women prefer, with more than 60 percent of enrollees in those classes identifying as female. Teacher professional development ranked second with almost 60 percent female enrollment. Medicine, arts, and health and society came in a close third with more than 50 percent female enrollment. But again, it was STEM courses and related fields that saw low levels of female enrollment and participation, according to Coursera’s findings.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/women-online-890/

By Meris Stansbury, eCampus News

To use or not to use faculty and admin created video in online learning has been a hot topic of debate in higher education, for many reasons. However, thanks to new research on video’s efficacy, best practices compiled over the last five years, and abundant technology resources, successfully creating and using video for online learning has never been easier to execute. According to a new report about instructor-generated video on student satisfaction in online classes, recently published in the MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, instructor-generated video (when created through YouTube) can have a positive and moderate influence on student satisfaction with, and engagement in, online courses.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/video-online-learning-991/

by Kristie Kellahan, Sydney Morning Herald

Erin Foo, 24, is a student of Torrens University’s master of education (early childhood) program. She studies online and is building on her previous bachelor’s qualification. ‘‘The online nature of the course allows me to work and improve my qualifications simultaneously,’’ she says. ‘‘The small class sizes have allowed me to really connect with my peers and create a network of professionals that have a shared, common goal of revolutionising the early childhood industry.’’ Torrens’ online learning portal, LENS (Learn, Evolve, Network, Socialise), enables students to connect online with other education professionals in a simple and convenient way. ‘‘The connectedness between LENS, the modules, the online library and discussion boards provides an environment where I want to contribute to the learning and experiences of others,’’ Foo says.

http://www.smh.com.au/business/education-online-course-allows-early-childhhood-teacher-to-keep-learning-20140811-101yeb.html

by Paula Ann Mitchell, Daily Freeman

Not surprisingly, the number of colleges and universities offering online study, or distance learning, is growing. The website www.collegeatlas.org, in fact, reports that three-fourths of them now provide that option, leaving one to wonder what that might mean for the future of traditional “brick and mortar” university study. the State University of New York at New Paltz has watched its onlne programs grow. “Our summer online enrollments have averaged about 1,800-plus students and our winter enrollments are 300-plus,” said Philip Mauceri, provost and vice president for academic affairs at SUNY New Paltz. “The enrollments are mostly SUNY New Paltz students, but several non-matriculated students from other states have enrolled in select courses. Our students also have the opportunity of taking online courses from other SUNY schools through Open SUNY, easily transferring them into our college.”

http://www.dailyfreeman.com/general-news/20140816/online-college-courses-making-the-grade

By Andrew Binstock, Dr. Dobb’s

If I were obliged to choose industries that are susceptible to significant disruption in the next few years, I would have to point to education as being the most obvious and most important. In a generation and a half, education has gone from being an expense that most families bore manageably or with some difficulty to an extraordinary cost that can plunge students and their parents into deep, long-lasting debt. Rather than being the path of upward mobility that it was for generations, education has evolved into the principal barrier between the wealthy and the rest of us. Education costs have risen far faster than inflation and can be accommodated mostly by parents who begin saving towards the expense the day their child is born. The current model cannot continue along its present trajectory. It is ripe for disruption, particularly in the programming field where developers are always partially self-taught and demonstrated skill, rather than coursework completion, is the defining hiring criterion.

http://www.drdobbs.com/tools/remote-learning-the-lay-of-the-land/240168860

By Carl Straumsheim, Inside Higher Ed

The University of California System, after five years and millions of dollars spent, is asking for more time and money to get its systemwide online education initiative off the ground. The 10-campus university system began to seriously consider a centralized approach to online education in 2009, as California faced a multibillion-dollar deficit that led to budget cuts, layoffs and tuition hikes across the state. Online for-credit courses, administrators believed — and to some extent still believe — could alleviate some the system’s access issues and create a new source of tuition revenue. But five years later, California’s economy has rebounded, and the exigency to go online and do so quickly has diminished.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/08/13/changing-economy-changes-online-education-priorities-u-california

By Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed

Tomorrow’s student may prefer mobile learning over stationary learning.

Tomorrow’s higher ed student may decide that paying for a traditional campus based residential experience makes about as much sense as paying for a new hardcover book.

Tomorrow’s student may find the lecture format as attractive as digital book enthusiasts finds the hardcover.

Are existing higher ed institutions (the incumbents) moving fast enough today to be ready for tomorrow’s learner?

By Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed

This week Josh Kim is in Cambridge for a Hewlett Foundation sponsored invited participant workshop on Learning With MOOCs. The timing of the gathering coincides with Dartmouth, his institution, working on developing DartmouthX open online courses on the edX platform. Spending a couple of days immersed in all thing open online learning prompted this post of eight ways in which many misunderstand MOOCs.

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/8-myths-about-moocs

BY Sunday Oni On, Sun News

The Vice Chancellor, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, Prof Bamitale Omole has described e-learning as the future of education, stressing that learning has left the traditional four walls of the university. He made the assertion recently in Lagos during the launch of the university’s e-learning platform by the institution’s Centre for Distance Learning (CDL). The platform, according to Prof Omole, would give the teeming Nigerian youths, as well as working class people, the opportunity to acquire university education, which has eluded many of them for so long due to space constraints in the universities.

http://sunnewsonline.com/new/?p=76568

By Melissa Gute, Northwest Arkansas Online

Use of NorthWest Arkansas Community College’s distance learning program continues grow in a time when overall enrollment has been less than optimal, Kate Burkes, director of distance learning, told the college’s board of trustees Monday. Burkes gave an update about the school’s distance learning program at the board meeting Monday afternoon. “The growth in distance learning across the nation has been phenomenal the last 20, 25 years,” said Steve Gates, senior vice president for learning and provost. “NWACC’s story is no exception.” Distance learning has become a huge part of the college’s delivery system, he said. The program provides expanded access for students, Burkes said.

http://www.nwaonline.com/news/2014/aug/12/distance-learning-meets-students-needs-/

by Tim Dodd, Financial Review

A key feature of Intersective’s Practera platform was that it let ­students “engage with real companies and real company issues”, Professor Wailes said. “Students go on to the ­platform, they get involved in brainstorming and discussion, then they form teams and work through business plans,” he said. “It has the potential to allow us to bring real world experiential learning into the online domain. Our students get to learn by doing.” The two new initiatives are in pilot form and, if successful, will become a permanent part of the master of ­business and technology degree in 2015.

http://www.afr.com/p/national/education/real_life_business_experience_over_nhh0Ry4nDuYRl4VQODvIdL

by Tim Dodd, Financial Review

The Massachusetts Institute of ­Technology (MIT) is preparing to ­disrupt the prevailing global model of higher education with a massive ­expansion of its online courses which it would sell to other universities through licence agreements. A new internal report has also urged MIT to “engage in bold experiments” with its undergraduate program to ensure the university continues to be a world leader “at a time of ­disruptive change”. The report, titled Institute-wide Task Force on the Future of MIT ­Education , said MIT academic staff had identified 300 courses that would be suitable for transforming into online learning.

http://www.afr.com/p/national/education/mit_to_take_its_courses_to_the_world_gO2bKr0SuryYnXMQ3N0uIK

By Mike Bush, ABQ Journal

After a tentative, first step into the world of Massive Open Online Courses last semester, the University of New Mexico this fall is offering three MOOCs, which, even before they are set to begin, already have more enrollees than UNM’s entire student body. UNM’s first MOOC, last spring, was Professor Greg Heileman’s Web Application Architectures. Then – and now – it was described by the university as an experiment. It was also wildly popular, with more than 48,000 students enrolling from 192 countries around the world, about 10 times what Heileman had expected.

http://www.abqjournal.com/444094/news/unm-expands-massive-online-courses-after-early-success.html