Online Learning Update

by Kevin P. McNamara, Chooi Yeng Lee, Pharmacy Education

The module focuses on approaches to counselling techniques for chronic disease management. It is complemented by therapeutics lectures, counselling tutorial and an objective structured clinical examination. A student survey, constructed based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour, was undertaken after completion of the assessment. Sixty two percent reported increased motivation to practice what they had learnt during placements, and a majority also reported improved attitudes and perceived self-efficacy. Levels of motivation had significant moderate correlations with improved appreciation of counselling techniques (r=0.489, p<0.001), and confidence to further practice blood pressure counselling (r=0.411, p<0.001). Increased motivation to manage hypertension during future placements appears correlated with perceived self-efficacy and engagement with the learning concepts.

http://pharmacyeducation.fip.org/2014/09/motivating-undergraduate-students-via-online-learning-to-develop-clinical-competencies/

by RICHARD FELONI, Business Insider

The start of a new school year may have you thinking about your own education, and whether you’re lacking in any area suited to your career. Maybe you have entrepreneurial aspirations but are lacking a financial background. Or maybe you realise that after years as a professional you still don’t know how to best manage your finances. Whatever your situation, there are plenty of excellent free online courses available this spring. We’ve gathered some of the best and linked them below.

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/best-free-online-business-courses-2014-9

By Michael M. Crow and Derrick M. Anderson, Deseret News

The way we think about online learning is inadequate. Attitudes generally fall into one of two prevailing camps: online learning optimism and pessimism. It’s time to look at it with realism. Clearly, the Internet is the frontier of social impact technologies. But the Internet is not just the means to view books in electronic form or pay bills online. It is a platform for using computational tools to enhance and bring new meaning to fundamental human pursuits. Online delivery has already transformed many centuries-old social enterprises. Banking, communication, commerce, government, news and art are all now more accessible, less expensive and faster to use and evolve. We should commit to online learning because of its promise to reinvent and enhance the age-old models that prevail in higher education. With deliberate effort, there is no foreseeable end to our ability to adapt to anything the future may bring.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865611097/Online-learning-Pessimism-optimism-and-realism.html

by John A. Byrne, USA Today

In a quarter of a century, most business students will never enter a classroom. The faculty lectures, the MBA student discussions and the homework assignments will occur instead over the Internet, where each part of the educational experience can be played as many times as it takes to fully absorb or satisfy, as if it were a Seinfeld rerun. The world’s most famous professors will more likely be compelling teachers—rather than journal-published researchers—and many of them will be free agents, unattached to a single university. Technology will allow for free-agent faculty, able to teach directly to students, with the university being what it will increasingly be viewed as: just another middleman taking a profit. Professors won’t need an affiliation with a university, because technology will allow them to create their own brands.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/09/14/cnbc-unbundled-mba-degree/15462785/

http://www.saycampuslife.com/2014/09/15/mooc-reaches-out-to-high-school-students/

by University of Cincinnati President Santa J. Ono, EDUCAUSE Review Online

From my perspective, digital engagement plays an indispensable role in the effort to be the kind of leader I want to be. Others are skeptical, or may even find the concept anathema to their idea of the college or university. But whatever one’s attitude, I submit that we best serve our stakeholders by adopting or rejecting social media for good and thoughtful reasons rather than by reflex, whether avid or fearful. Here are some numbers that might widen your eyes, as they did mine. As of January 2013, there were more devices connected to the Internet than there were people on Earth. In 2014, the average time people are spending on Facebook each month reaches 15.5 hours. Twitter logs over 300 million tweets every day. Virtually all—98 percent—of 18- to 24-year-olds use social media. According to one source, 40 percent of people said they socialize more on social media than face-to-face. Whether or not a president chooses to engage in digital communication, social media is helping to shape the environment of his or her institution. If that institution is to thrive (not just exist), leaders need to take a look that is long, slow, and careful at the media that are brief, quick, and provisional.

http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/leading-140-characters-or-less

by Ray Schroeder and Deborah Everhart, UPCEA / Blackboard

The higher education field is abuzz with terms like competency-based, adaptive, blended, flipped, mobile, open and more. What does it all mean and how can your institution assemble the right “mix” of teaching and learning offerings to meet the needs of today’s students. Please join UPCEA and Blackboard, as they explore the evolving variety of teaching and learning modalities, the value they bring and the impact they are having on higher education. Discussion will include:

• Explore trends that are driving this change
• Envision the evolving landscape we see emerging in the coming year
• Discuss research results related to these alternative modalities
• Offer best practices used to achieve the right mix for your institution

12:30pm-1:30 p.m. EDT Free Registration:

http://bbbb.blackboard.com/Learning_Mode_Mixology

by Maura Smale and Mariana Regalado, EDUCAUSE Review Online

A multi-year qualitative study of undergraduates at six colleges at the City University of New York focused on how, where, and when students accomplished their academic work and how the presence or absence of access to technology helped and hindered them. CUNY students have an average commute time of 45–60 minutes each way and typically use public transportation, making commuting a defining feature of undergraduate life at CUNY that offers both opportunities and challenges. The study sought to understand how students made time and found space to do their schoolwork outside of class, including their use of technology for coursework. Among its outcomes, the study offers concrete steps that other institutions can take to help mitigate technology constraints for their own students.

http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/commuter-students-using-technology

by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle

We believe this is going to be one of the most transformative platforms for education of all time. I know, it’s easy to say, hard to prove. But time will tell. There’s this thing that happens when you see really great VR. And most of the world hasn’t seen it yet. Maybe only 1,000 people have seen really great VR that tricks your brain, the back of the brain, into thinking that it’s a real place. And when you get that, you suddenly get the feeling, and it’s not like I’m looking at a video game or some kind of entertainment experience. It’s like you’re in a virtual place. We showed the folks from the Smithsonian, we showed folks from a number of different industries—the automobile industry, the architecture industry—we’ve shown people the latest prototype, and they’ve gotten incredibly excited about the visualization aspect.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/will-the-next-classroom-disruption-be-in-3-d-facebooks-virtual-reality-company-thinks-so/54517

by John A. Byrne, CNBC

In a quarter of a century, most business students will never enter a classroom. The faculty lectures, the MBA student discussions and the homework assignments will occur instead over the Internet, where each part of the educational experience can be played as many times as it takes to fully absorb or satisfy, as if it were a Seinfeld rerun. The world’s most famous professors will more likely be compelling teachers—rather than journal-published researchers—and many of them will be free agents, unattached to a single university. Technology will allow for free-agent faculty, able to teach directly to students, with the university being what it will increasingly be viewed as: just another middleman taking a profit. Professors won’t need an affiliation with a university, because technology will allow them to create their own brands.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/09/14/cnbc-unbundled-mba-degree/15462785/

By David Raths, Campus Technology

Whether it’s a recorded lecture for a flipped class or a multimedia student assignment, video has grown into a major component of learning content at today’s colleges and universities. Yet many institutions continue to struggle with managing the abundance of video on campus: Having outgrown YouTube, they desperately need a video platform that can scale to large numbers of people across many locations; stream to many types of devices; allow faculty to create and manage their own video libraries; and share content across multiple schools. In New York state, two groups of higher ed institutions are tackling the problem: The New York Six, a consortium of liberal arts institutions, and the State University of New York system have each taken a collaborative approach to make it easier to manage and share video.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/09/11/when-youtube-isnt-enough-to-manage-your-campus-video-content.aspx

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

Digital textbooks are becoming a bigger part of the vernacular in higher education. A recent survey showed that slightly more than three out of five students use interactive textbooks with features that include video, audio and quizzes; more than two out of five students work in courses that use apps, social media and online productivity tools; and one out of three students has attended flipped classrooms in which they watch video lectures before heading to class. About a quarter of students have attended some form of massive, open, online course. Of those forms of technology students said the most helpful one is the interactive textbook. Of all the benefits of using a digital textbook, 31 percent reported the top one being that they make lessons easier to understand; 23 percent stated that they help students complete assignments more quickly; and 21 percent said they help students stay more organized.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/09/02/survey-digital-textbooks-gaining-esteem-in-student-eyes.aspx

By Meris Stansbury, eCampus News

New case study offers 8 replicable strategies to get faculty buy-in and enthusiasm for online initiatives.  University initiatives to provide more online and blended learning courses are becoming increasingly crucial for today’s alternative education-minded students. Without faculty buy-in, these initiatives may never come to fruition. However, one university says it discovered eight replicable strategies to recruit and retain faculty.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/faculty-online-recruitment-986/

by Marketwatch

Two-hundred students from diverse backgrounds will receive scholarships funded by AT&T and Udacity for an online degree that will help prepare them for careers in the tech industry. Announced today at The Atlantic’s Technologies in Education 2014 forum, the scholarships will cover the costs for students to earn nanodegrees. “Nanodegrees are a new type of credential for students anywhere to have access to affordable training. Earning this credential will soon become a key part of AT&T’s training and talent acquisition model and our hope is that it will be recognized by other employers in a similar fashion,” said Scott S. Smith, Senior Vice President of Human Resources Operations at AT&T.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/att-and-udacity-to-offer-scholarships-to-underserved-students-for-new-online-tech-training-program-2014-09-11

By Neil Morris, Epoch Times

As someone who leads and manages the MOOC project at the University of Leeds, I know that freely available online courses have enriched many people’s lives—both students and academics. They are also provoking real transformations in the way we think about learning and teaching on our campuses. The learning materials live on. The end product, overlaid with animation and available as video in multiple formats, an audio podcast or a written transcript, can be repurposed, published, and reused in multiple contexts after the online course has finished.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/948510-dont-dismiss-moocs-we-are-just-starting-to-understand-their-true-value/

BY MARCEL SALATHE, Wired

Numerous MOOC providers have appeared, competing for the attention of learners around the globe. What started with a few courses is now a rapidly developing field with thousands of courses on offer. Some providers have changed their focus from traditional higher education to more vocational training. Most have started charging for services such as verified certificates. All of them are trying to figure out where this rocket ship is headed. Anything that makes such a splash in such a short amount of time is guaranteed to have its critics, and MOOCs were no exception. After disappointing results in high-profile experiments at San Jose State University, critics saw themselves vindicated, and the New York Times – which had boldly declared the year of the MOOC in 2012 – ran an article with the title “After Setbacks, Online Courses Are Rethought”.

http://www.wired.com/2014/09/moocs-2-0/

By Alicia DelGallo, Orlando Sentinel

Area high-school athletes increasingly are turning to virtual classes to repair or boost their grades, lighten traditional class loads or to make schedules more flexible, allowing ample time for practice and training. “It’s a recent thing for kids to start taking online classes, and mostly because Florida Virtual is offering more selection,” Lake Howell coach Vicky Hilbert said. “For those students who work better independently, it’s a great option.” In 2011, a state law went into effect that requires all public-school students to take at least one class online before graduating. That may be one reason why the total number of Florida Virtual School semester completions jumped from 213,926 in the 2009-10 school year to 410,962 in 2012-13, the last year data is available.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/highschool/os-hs-florida-virtual-school-athletic-impact-20140909,0,272200.story

By EMILY SCHEIE, World Magazine

The cost of higher education is drowning students in debt, but college degrees are increasingly important in careers. Massive open online courses (MOOCs), offering free to low-cost online college classes, might have the solution for students. But how MOOCs might change traditional higher education and post-secondary credentials is less clear. Completing MOOC courses originally earned students no college credit. But people are beginning to pursue various kinds of credentials, including entire degrees, through the MOOC format, paying a small percentage of what traditional degree paths cost.

http://www.worldmag.com/2014/09/moocs_give_higher_education_a_run_for_its_money

by Alex Wilhelm, Tech Crunch

At Disrupt SF, Coursera’s president Daphne Koller pushed back against the notion that her company is a for-profit education company: In her view, Coursera is instead a for-profit technology company. TechCrunch’s Frederic Lardinois pressed Koller on the completion rates the average class on her platform sees — only 5 percent of people that enroll in a future class finish the course. Koller wasn’t perturbed. According to her numbers, of the people who actually want to finish the course, 70 percent do so, a number that she said was high for “an online activity.” The company does have the figures in mind, it seems, as it is moving towards more self-directed learning, and classes that have less rigid — and distant — start dates. Koller indicated that if a class starts within a week of a student enrolling — compared to its current model — engagement doubles.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/10/coursera-president-daphne-koller-2014-is-the-year-moocs-will-come-of-age/

by Inside Higher Ed

Nearly nine in 10 students in the Harris Poll survey sponsored by Pearson used a laptop on a regular basis, compared to 83 percent who said they used a smartphone. Last year, 72 percent of survey respondents said they used a smartphone. Tablet use is increasing more slowly, with 45 percent of surveyed students saying they used one regularly — up 5 percent from the year before.

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2014/09/11/smartphone-use-rising-fast-among-college-students

Complete report: http://www.pearsoned.com/wp-content/uploads/Pearson-HE-Student-Mobile-Device-Survey-PUBLIC-Report-051614.pdf

by EDUCAUSE

Online learning, or e-learning, is the use of technology to deliver instruction and facilitate and enhance learning. Online learning today includes rich interactive media to promote deeper learning and access to tools that help students reflect on their skills, abilities, and progress as learners. As it has gained in both popularity and promise, online learning has become a priority for institutional leaders to understand and apply to their institution’s particular pedagogical culture and strategic priorities. This EDUCAUSE research brief outlines key questions leaders should ask—and relevant data to consider—to help develop or refine a strategic direction for online learning and the digital engagement it enables.

http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ekq01.pdf