Online Learning Update

by ChiWei Ranck, Udacity

Our mission at Udacity is to help you succeed in your career and ultimately transform your life. Even as we’ve evolved from providing free content to now providing both free and paid learning options, our core values remain the same. We work with industry leaders like Google to provide you with the skills that today’s employers are seeking. We help you prepare for a new job or a new career and we rejoice in your accomplishments. One way we can further help you reach your goals is to reduce the cost of a Nanodegree. We’re excited to announce a new feature of the Nanodegree program that will give you half of your tuition back when you graduate within 12 months of enrollment.

http://blog.udacity.com/2015/07/get-half-your-tuition-back-when-you-graduate.html

by US Dept of Education

This study measured the impact of using hybrid forms of interactive online learning in seven undergraduate courses across seven universities in the University System of Maryland. Interactive online learning can involve video lectures, opportunities for discussion and interaction with instructors and peers, and online assignments and exams. Hybrid forms of such courses combine online learning components with traditional face-to-face instruction. Of the 1,598 students enrolled in large introductory biology, statistics, precalculus, computer science, and communications courses, 778 were enrolled in sections that used the hybrid delivery format, and 820 were enrolled in the sections that used a traditional delivery format. The hybrid delivery format entailed one of two types of technology platforms: Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) supported by Coursera or materials from the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) developed by Carnegie Mellon University. Five of the hybrid courses had reduced face-to-face class time, and two courses used the online materials as supplements.

http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/SingleStudyReview.aspx?sid=20121

by Peter Daisyme, Entrepreneur

You have to continually expand your knowledge to succeed as an entrepreneur. Thankfully, educational institutions and technology are making continuing your education more convenient through online course. While there are thousands of informative and inspiring online courses you can take, here are classes you definitely need to enroll in if you want to be an entrepreneur.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/248055

By Ron Bethke, eCampus News

Better use of educational video identified as paramount to improving the learning experience for students moving forward. The key to enhancing learning outcomes in higher education moving forward will stem from the optimal use of video, says a new whitepaper. The report, titled “Perfecting Blended Learning: Why Video Is The Missing Ingredient In Blended Learning” was released by Knowledgemotion to coincide with London’s Technology week and the EdTech Europe 2015 event. It includes extensive research and testimonials from educators and industry partners on how video can best (and should) be used both inside and outside of classrooms.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/technologies/video-blended-learning-476/

by Mitch LeClair, USA TODAY

More than one-third of Americans have earned a postsecondary degree. Few obtain one as a teenager. But this spring, hundreds — if not thousands — of U.S. students received associate degrees before high school commencements. Young adults with two diplomas are outliers in programs allowing high school students to earn college credits, which operate under various names and formats. They are growing in number at about 7% per year, according to the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships, or NACEP.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/07/07/more-students-getting-college-degrees-in-high-school/29846455/

by Kaila White, The Republic

A new free, public online class from Arizona State University can up your skills in skepticism, “BS detection,” fact-checking your friends and not embarrassing yourself by sharing fake information on social media. “Media LIT: Overcoming Information Overload” is ASU’s first public, free online course. More than 3,000 people from 126 countries have enrolled in the massive open online course, or MOOC, which posted the first lesson Monday.

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe/2015/07/07/asu-online-class-free-mooc-journalism/29816569/

by Sherree Geyer, Healthcare IT News

Hospitals that leverage online learning to reduce the cost of continuing education requirements may experience a bonus: lower lengths of stay, reduced readmissions and improved quality indicators. So says Teresa Fugate, a case management consultant who credits online learning tools with lower lengths of stay at Knoxville, Tenn.-based Covenant Health, where she served as vice president of case management for five years.

”We saw a reduction in LOS by getting tidbits (of information) on how to handle a chronic case,” she says – adding that informed case managers made informed decisions.

http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/online-cme-learning-has-hidden-benefits

by Maria Teresa Alzuru and Matthea Marquart, EDUCAUSE Review

Students preparing to take online courses anticipated gaining professional skills in addition to their online learning of the course content. A survey of the marketable skills students wanted to obtain found that 38 percent chose all 10 of the professional options offered as possible answers. The top three skills students wanted to gain were “Confidence with online technologies and environments,” “Self-motivation, initiative, and independent learning,” and “Experience with multiple types of online software.”

http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/online-students-develop-marketable-professional-skills

by D. Frank Smith, Educational Technology

While some universities are wondering how to integrate online coursework into their classes, Adelaide University is actively phasing out lectures. The growth of online classes has been seen across nearly every higher education institution across the country. In a keynote session at EDUCAUSE in October 2014, Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen said online learning would fundamentally change the role of universities in the near future. Despite the changes on the horizon, the structure of most college courses has remained the same: stand-and-deliver instruction, also known as lectures, can be found at nearly every university in the country. But the University of Adelaide’s vice-chancellor Warren Bebbington told The Financial Review that “lecturers are obsolete.”

http://www.edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2015/07/universitys-success-flipped-learning-began-phasing-out-lectures

by NATHAN MCALONE, Business Insider

One of the classic laments of online learning is the lack of human interaction. Sure, you can attend class in your underwear, but you never get the connection of meeting your professors and classmates face-to-face. This can feel especially detrimental in programs that are built on networking, like business school. But some top business schools are now experimenting with 3D avatars and virtual classrooms to give students all over the world a chance at a more traditional education, The Wall Street Journal reports. MIT’s Sloan was one of the first schools to roll out a virtual reality classroom experience during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Many of their students couldn’t make it to campus, so instead of cancelling, they decided to try out the avatars.

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/mit-stanford-other-business-schools-using-3d-avatars-for-online-students-2015-7

By Tara García Mathewson, Education Dive

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) are expected to introduce legislation in their respective chambers Wednesday that would make the first two years of college free for low-income students attending community, technical, or tribal colleges. The legislation provides a $3 federal match for every $1 states invest to waive two years of tuition and fees. The America’s College Promise Act is also designed to cover much of the cost of a low-income student’s first two years of a bachelor’s degree at eligible minority-serving institutions.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/free-community-college-plan-going-before-congress/401939/

by Todd Tauber, Chief Learning Officer

Everyone knows most learning happens beyond the classroom walls and outside learning management systems. But new research shows just how much — and the data are startling. In the past year, learning technology company Degreed conducted two separate surveys that show workers spend four to five times more time on self-directed learning than on internal or external learning offerings (Editor’s note: The author works for Degreed). They invest more than 14 hours a month, on average, learning on their own but just two to three hours on employer-provided learning. Learners want easier and faster access to answers. Degreed found almost 70 percent of workers say the first thing they do when they need to learn something for their jobs is Google it, then read or watch what they find. About 42 percent look for a live or online course, but they do it on their own. These are mature adults. They have a good idea what they need.

http://www.clomedia.com/articles/6358-what-learners-really-want

by Cassidy Trowbridge, Phoenix Business Journal

Arizona State University’s model of inclusiveness vs. exclusivity has expanded even further into Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. MOOCs are online classes that the public can attend for free, ranging in topics and experts. Many MOOCs offer paid certificates and a smaller amount offer college credit. ASU has partnered with edX, a MOOC platform that allows the public to take college-level classes for no cost. EdX was created by MIT and Harvard University in 2012 as a nonprofit open-source software learning platform.

http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2015/07/06/asu-launches-free-college-course-program-with-paid.html

By: Cassie Lipp, University of Cincinnati

English composition and rhetoric of law professor Cynthia Ris learns how to best facilitate an online learning community both through research with her past classes and collaboration with the larger UC community. “I’m looking to see how I can help students’ facility with working online and especially improve their communication and critical thinking skills,” Ris, an English professor in the McMicken College of Arts & Sciences, said. Ris believes improving communication in an online environment and quality in online classes is crucial, as most careers require online work.

http://www.uc.edu/profiles/profile.asp?id=21926

By Joshua Bolkan, Campus Technology

A new survey of students enrolled in massive open online courses (MOOCs) suggests that the courses are supplementing traditional higher education forms and “democratizing learning.” Researchers from Duke University studied “13 free, open-access digital courses offered by Duke using the Coursera platform,” according to a news release, and found that the courses “are popular among youngsters, retirees and other non-traditional student populations.” The team analyzed pre-course surveys administered to all students who signed up for a fall 2014 MOOC offered by Duke, looking specifically at responses from 9,000 people younger than 18, older than 65 and those who reported that they had no access to higher education.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/07/06/survey-moocs-supplement-traditional-higher-ed.aspx

by Tim Stephens, UC Santa Cruz

UC Santa Cruz faculty venturing into the brave new world of online education are finding that a well-designed online course can be more accessible, and may even provide a better educational experience for students, than some traditionally taught courses. This is especially true for courses that large numbers of students are required to take for their majors, such as calculus. The online calculus courses taught by UC Santa Cruz math faculty Frank Bäuerle and Anthony Tromba (“Calculus for Science, Engineering, and Mathematics,” Math 19A & 19B) are now available to all UC students through the UC Online cross-campus enrollment system.

http://news.ucsc.edu/2015/07/online-courses.html

By Larry Dignan, ZD Net

MIT said it has begun using artificial intelligence and big data techniques to better predict which students will drop out from open online courses. The news, which was detailed at a conference on artificial intelligence in education last week, is notable for a few reasons. First, online education is promising, but recent surveys have indicated that there are cultural issues at universities hampering online enrollment. The other issue is that some students simply aren’t disciplined enough for online learning. MIT’s techniques touch on that latter point a bit.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/mit-uses-artificial-intelligence-to-predict-online-learning-drop-outs/

by Journalist’s Resource

A 2015 report from a research consortium at Harvard University and MIT provides new data on the MOOC project that the two universities jointly launched in 2012. One of the largest surveys of MOOCs to date, it builds on a series of reports released in 2014 that focused on the joint project’s first year of operation. The new report, “HarvardX and MITx: Two Years of Open Online Courses,” includes data collected between July 2012 and September 2014. Researchers used newly available data and surveys to better understand who the participants are and how they take advantage of the free online courses offered by the two institutions. The findings are based on 68 courses across HarvardX and MITx, 1.7 million participants and 10 million hours of participation.

http://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/education/massive-open-online-courses-moocs-harvardx-mitx

By Ian Whitaker, Las Vegas Sun

Buoyed by an endorsement from Gov. Brian Sandoval, the online Western Governors University is making its way into Nevada. The university announced this month that it would offer classes in the state. The private, nonprofit school is based in Utah and has more than 57,000 students nationwide. The university will offer degrees in information technology, health, teaching and business in an attempt to align itself with the state’s goals of building a skilled workforce in those fields.

http://lasvegassun.com/news/2015/jun/30/western-governors-university-offer-online-classes-/

By Lola Duffort, Rutland Herald

The state has signed an agreement that will make it much easier — and cheaper — for Vermont-based colleges to export their online courses to students nationwide. Currently, a college must get approval from each state from which it intends to enroll students to their online courses — an often complicated and costly process. The National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement, to which Vermont has just signed on, simplifies that process. SARA member states agree to allow participating institutions from across the country to offer their courses to students within their borders without seeking that separate state’s approval.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20150630/NEWS01/706309949/1002

by James Poulos, the Week

A wellspring of fresh faith has surged up around so-called SPOCs. Small and Private, not Massive and Open, SPOCs are boasting better completion rates and better vibes than their highly scalable predecessors. Garlock posits a developing consensus: “[B]y using technology to combine the centuries-old lessons of campus education with the best promises of massive learning, SPOCs may be the most relevant and promisingly disruptive experiments the MOOC boom has yet produced.” So long as the SPOC model is restricted to accredited universities, however, its impact is likely to be limited in at least one important way. Even if, as Garlock suggests, it “enables deep engagement through intense Socratic discussions” in a way that far surpasses what MOOCs can achieve, it’s still beholden to the formal and informal rules of academic officialdom — where shifting, often shadowy moral and bureaucratic strictures have made the pursuit of wisdom in the classroom prohibitively difficult and risky.

http://theweek.com/articles/563541/are-small-private-online-courses-future-higher-education-america