Online Learning Update

By Carl Straumsheim, Inside Higher Ed

The more students who witness cyberbullying in an online setting — for example, in an online course — the less likely those students are to take a stand against it, a new study suggests. The report, published in this quarter’s edition of Communication Monographs, explores how witnesses choose to act — or not act — in response to cyberbullying. Its findings suggest college students’ ability to intervene in cyberbullying changes depending on the number of other students witnessing the bullying, their perception of their own anonymity and how close they feel to the victim, among other factors.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/07/01/study-examines-bystander-behavior-cyberbullying-cases

By Carly Morales, eCampus News

The next step in improving students’ experience in higher ed may be in rebuilding campus spaces for collaboration and data sharing. Institutions need to create layered, blended and personalized places that support a variety of interactions and digital platforms, rather than creating specialized spaces, such as computer labs. These findings are part of a recent study, which also found that mobility has transformed the way students learn, and therefore requires careful attention to physical spaces now more than ever.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/collaboration-design-campus-365/

by NC-SARA

As of June 29, 2015, twenty-seven states have now joined the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements (SARA) initiative, a key moment for SARA and higher education. In the past month, we have had the pleasure of welcoming Iowa, approved by the Midwestern Higher Education Compact (MHEC) to join the Midwestern State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement (M-SARA) on June 1. Tennessee, Arkansas, and Oklahoma soon followed with approval by Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) to join the Southern State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement (S-SARA) on June 29. These states join 23 others (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wyoming and West Virginia) as members of SARA. SARA is a nationwide initiative of states that will make distance education courses more accessible to students across state lines and make it easier for states to regulate and institutions to participate in interstate distance education. The effort is funded by a $3 million grant from Lumina Foundation, $200,000 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and fees paid by institutions.

http://us3.campaign-archive1.com/?u=d33f013c3412cbcac1e8ae453&id=623dfbe015&e=7e8a4b699b

by Guest, Corner of College and Allen

So how does one plan, implement, and prepare for successful online classes? As mother of three children, student at Penn State World Campus at least three-quarters of my time, and intern part-time in human resources for Hershey Entertainment & Resorts, I have a lot on my plate. But despite my numerous tasks, I still maintain my honor roll status. Here’s how I manage my time — and maybe my tips will help you achieve the best possible experience with your own course work. We all have the same amount of time in each day to accomplish everything with success and minimal stress. It takes a lot of work at first, but soon you can develop a forced habit. Over time and with scads of advice from successful peers, I have learned to use these exceptional strategies that I will share with you, in the hope that you, too, can succeed!

http://studentblog.worldcampus.psu.edu/index.php/2015/06/balancing-act-finding-success-with-online-classes/

By Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology

“Bring Your Own Device,” or BYOD, has been an ed tech buzzword for so long that it’s hard to imagine a learning environment without student-owned laptops, tablets, smartphones and the like. In fact, in its 2015 Top 10 IT Issues, Educause referred to BYOD as part of “the new normal,” pointing out that technologies such as mobile, online education, cloud and BYOD are forcing IT to retool and redefine its support strategies and security policies. “What began in the last decade as a faculty or staff member connecting a personal laptop to the campus network has exploded into an ever-growing ecosystem of personally owned smartphones, tablets, cloud storage, processing, and other individually owned technologies that are everywhere we are,” wrote Mark Askren, CIO at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, in the ECAR research report “The Consumerization of Technology and the Bring-Your-Own-Everything (BYOE) Era of Higher Education.”

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/06/25/tackling-byoe-in-higher-ed.aspx

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

Purdue University found a way to create a flexible and inviting learning space for on-campus learners while also delivering high-quality audio and video recording for distance students. Determined to provide a better experience for everybody, the university laid out specific requirements for the new physical space: soundproofing, acoustic panels and ceiling mics (which would be out of the way and less intimidating for students physically present). To be able to turn lectures around quickly for online use, Conrad’s team chose Telestream appliances to do the encoding, which would allow the school to provide recordings within 20 minutes from the time the lecture was completed. The encoding process would capture the lecture, creating a massive file, then compress that down into an MPEG-4 file and push it onto a Web server. To make sure lectures weren’t lost due to technical difficulty, the division used two layers of backup. And for real-time lecture streaming, the staff implemented a Wowza Media Systems server too.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/06/24/designing-learning-spaces-for-both-online-and-on-campus-delivery.aspx

by Christine Greenhow & Andy Henion, MSU Today

Social-networking sites such as Facebook can help students learn scientific literacy and other complex subjects that often receive short shrift in today’s time-strapped classrooms. In a first-of-its-kind study, Michigan State University’s Christine Greenhow found that high school and college students engaged in vigorous, intelligent debate about scientific issues in a voluntary Facebook forum. Such informal learning not only could supplement the content knowledge students acquire in class, but also connect them with professionals and experts in the field, spur interest in careers and inspire civic engagement.

http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2015/is-facebook-the-next-frontier-for-online-learning/

By Amy X. Wang, Future Tense

Carnegie Mellon University has a problem. It’s a good one, this time—unlike when it lost dozens of researchers and scientists to Uber. The university’s new problem is not one of lack but of excess: Too many students are interested in taking a popular computer science course, and there’s not enough physical space in the classroom to accommodate them all. Rather than move the course to a football stadium, the Pittsburgh-based university plans to open the course up to more students by moving the majority of its instructional content from the classroom to the Internet. But it’s not just uploading a series of lectures and calling it an online course. The university will rely on a “blended learning” approach, combining video lectures, optional minilectures, and a handful of face-to-face group meetings between students and instructors for concepts that need to be reinforced in person.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/06/29/blended_learning_carnegie_mellon_university_will_debut_new_online_instructional.html

By Ian Quillen, US News

By forming online learning institutes and collecting data about student progress, programs hope to improve virtual learning. The University of Phoenix and DeVry University have implemented systems that run an analysis to look for troubling patterns in a student’s progress. For many online students, the flexibility of an online degree or certification program outweighs the possibility of a less immersive student experience. As a result, some programs are using innovative methods to foster an online educational experience that is more supportive, engaging, and responsive to student demands. Among those tactics are the use of big, integrated data and analytics to help identify and support struggling students, the creation of research bodies devoted to studying online learning methods, and the development of collaborative relationships with virtual student clubs and associations.

http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2015/06/29/3-ways-colleges-are-working-to-improve-online-learning

By Tara García Mathewson, Education Dive

The for-profit college industry has lost a second round in the battle over the U.S. Department of Education’s gainful employment regulations. The New York Times reports that U.S. District Court Judge John D. Bates in the District of Columbia ruled Tuesday that the department has a right to require colleges to prove their graduates make enough to pay back their student loans in order to be eligible for federal student aid dollars. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the lawsuit was the highest hurdle preventing implementation of the regulation, but lawmakers still could block the rules by refusing to fund the department’s enforcement of them.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/gainful-employment-rule-upheld-by-dc-judge/401268/

by Tim Dodd, AFR

Lectures are obsolete, says University of Adelaide vice-chancellor Warren Bebbington. “My view is they’re gone; they’re never coming back,” he said as he described his university’s experience in replacing lectures with online learning. If students can get the material online, they are not going to come to lectures, he said. Last year Adelaide began a major shift in its teaching program, beginning to phase out traditional lectures and replacing them with online learning integrated with small-group work.

http://www.afr.com/technology/apps/education/university-of-adelaide-is-phasing-out-lectures-20150629-ghxgoz

By Mandy Morgan, Deseret News

Jaxson Goeckeritz was just 10 years old when he decided to be a computer programmer. Neither of his parents had much knowledge on the topic, so they enrolled him in a computer programming class at a nearby university, but it was too boring. Turns out, he had already learned all of the course material from YouTube. Jaxson’s parents had also let their son watch videos from The New Boston, teaching him different aspects and techniques in computer programming with everything from Java to iOS development. The Goeckeritz’s are representative of millions of people who don’t just turn to the Internet as a resource for answers to questions, but prefer video streaming sources like YouTube, Vimeo and others to see with their own eyes people sharing their knowledge and skills through demonstrations or just talking.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865631523/21st-century-learning-How-online-videos-enhance-education-at-home-and-in-the-classroom.html?pg=all

By Tech. Sgt. Luke Thornton, Air Force Space Command

Air Force cyber Airman training takes a giant leap forward with the latest enhancement to AF e-Learning. The upgrade allows Air Force supervisors and trainers to facilitate better skill-level upgrade and on-the-job training with customizable learning programs that can be updated on the fly to remain current as technology changes. Computer-based training courses typically cover few training tasks and take hours to complete. Now, supervisors, training managers and the Air Force cyber training team at Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi, can drill down using modules, chapters and videos to focus cyber Airmen on particular tasks. This will shorten the amount of time Airmen spend on task training while allowing them to learn in a way that works best for their learning style.

http://www.af.mil/News/ArticleDisplay/tabid/223/Article/602024/enhanced-e-learning-for-cyber-airmen.aspx

by Chunfang Zhou, Aparna Purushothaman, iJet

This paper provides a literature review aiming to discuss the need for fostering creativity and digital inclusion among women students in developing contexts by addressing the second order digital divide in online skills. As the literature review indicates, we are in the change towards creative society and creativity is the core competency of students to be mastered in the digital age. The digital technologies also provide conditions of developing creativity, for example, YouTube can be regarded as a creative platform. This paper also discusses the links between creativity, learning and knowledge, digital divide in developing contexts especially the second order digital divide as the main barrier to women students’ learning. This further implies how to teach creativity more effectively in the future.

http://online-journals.org/index.php/i-jet/article/view/4248

by Anna Danielewicz-Betz, Tatsuki Kawaguchi; iJet

In this paper we report on the practical outcomes of Software Studio (SS) undergraduate course, but also on a graduate Software Engineering for Internet Applications (SEIA) course, both of which are taught collaboratively by IT and non-IT faculty members. In the latter, students are assigned to projects proposed by actual customers and work together in teams to deliver quality results under time and resource constraints. Students have to understand the key ideas of web application development in order to be able not only to apply technical knowledge, but also to successfully interact with all the stakeholders involved. In the process, we look for the added value of collaborative teaching, aiming at equipping the participants with both technical and non-technical skills required for their prospective jobs.

http://online-journals.org/index.php/i-jet/article/view/4510

by Peter Stokes, Inside Higher Ed

We see millions of students pursuing degrees wholly online and millions more taking the odd online course for credit, while still millions more are signing up for non-credit-bearing MOOCs. That goes some way to underscoring the fact that online learning is an established and maturing field. But it’s also flattening out. Today the growth has slowed, almost to a standstill, and thus the high-octane revenue growth phase may be behind us. This may explain, in part, why the field is starting to be talked about in new ways, particularly as new sorts of institutions get involved, as the motivations for deploying an ever-growing number of learning technologies gradually begin to shift, as learning scientists leverage the growing quantities of data captured by these technologies and as the organizational structures online learning operates under begin to take new shape.

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2015/07/30/its-time-shift-discussion-online-learning-digital-strategy-essay

by Salaheddin Odeh, et al; iJet

Engineering is an applied science; it makes science come alive through experiments and labs. Students can only gain practical knowledge that goes beyond mere scientific theory in the educational labs. This can be done using three different types of educational labs: Augmented reality labs, Virtual labs and Traditional labs. It is crucial to pre-specify the learning objectives associated with each experiment in order to be able to meet them no matter what the method of delivery is. This paper focuses on an empirical study that compares the three types of labs after specifying the associated learning objectives.

http://online-journals.org/index.php/i-jet/article/view/4354

by COIL, Penn State University

Penn State’s Center for Online Innovation in Learning (COIL) has announced it will fund seven new projects through its Research Initiation Grant program. The goal of the grant program is to provide seed money for Penn State researchers to gather preliminary evidence in the hope of pursuing external funding for larger studies that enhance teaching and learning through online innovation.

http://news.psu.edu/story/361406/2015/06/25/research/penn-state-researchers-awarded-funding-online-learning-innovations

By ROGER MCKINNEY, Columbia Tribune

The University of Missouri has established a 10 percent tuition discount for online courses available to current military members, veterans and their spouses and children. The discount applies to base tuition for a maximum of 150 hours of undergraduate credits and 75 hours of graduate credits through Mizzou Online. Recipients must be seeking a degree. Those who qualify for the award must maintain a minimum 2.0 GPA to remain eligible. The discount was created because many veterans have exhausted their military educational benefits or don’t qualify for full coverage, MU officials said. MU Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin said during a Wednesday news conference that the tuition discount will improve access to higher education.

http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/education/mu-to-offer-military-discount-for-online-classes/article_b455cd73-16ea-544d-b9e6-db4218a4f3e8.html

by Kunal Chawla, EdSurge

Learning online can be a very lonely process. You sit with your computer, working for the most part in a quarantined digital island, unaware of your peers and their struggles in the course. In this post I want to highlight some ways of connecting online students and creating a vibrant learning community. Here are some ideas I have tried while making courses on Python Programming and iPhone App Development with Udacity.

https://www.edsurge.com/n/2015-06-24-5-essential-steps-to-building-community-for-your-online-course