Online Learning Update

by Jennifer B. Kahnweiler, CIO

Make sure development suits introverted employees — they have more influence than their quiet dispositions might suggest. Imagine this scenario: For the fifth time that morning, the management training facilitator asked if there were any questions. The roomful of mostly introverted engineers fell silent. Rather than engage people in small groups or ask them to write down their ideas, she continued to run her class the way she had always done — geared toward extroverts. The result? The quieter folks in the room weren’t heard, nor were they engaged with the material. The extroverts who might have benefited with their questions and contributions also lost out. Learning methods are often not created with introverts in mind, but they should be.

http://www.clomedia.com/articles/6498-is-your-learning-introvert-friendly

by Michael Hotchkiss, Princeton University

Princeton University continues to broaden its online teaching and learning efforts and has become a charter member of the edX Consortium. As a result, millions of learners will have the opportunity to take free classes offered by Princeton faculty on the edX online platform. The first course taught by a Princeton faculty member on edX is scheduled to begin in October. Jennifer Widner, a professor of politics and international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, will lead the course “Making Government Work in Hard Places.”

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S44/30/40Q82/index.xml

By Darwin Green, US News

With online learning, military students don’t have to worry about whether moving will interfere with their studies. It was the winter of 2012, and my wife and I were waiting to hear the location of her next military post. I wanted to enroll in college because I needed to start a career I could use wherever we ended up. We got the orders for Nebraska one month prior to moving. Several weeks after we arrived, I started taking online classes at Pennsylvania State University—World Campus, where I’m now in my last semester of earning an online degree in psychology. Based on my experience, here are three things people from the military community should know about online learning.

http://www.usnews.com/education/online-learning-lessons/2015/09/25/3-things-the-military-community-should-know-about-online-learning

by B Daily

Jobs today are changing faster than ever – too fast for the traditional education system to keep up and adequately train the next workforce. The majority of Udemy courses taken (75%) are work related as people look to move their careers forward, either in traditional workplaces or by building their own businesses. The report identifies the changing face of learning. Twelve of the top 20 most popular courses would not have been heard of a decade ago. As technology moves at such a fast pace, skills such as web and app development are now paramount to British businesses, but not universally taught in traditional education. People need to keep their skills up to date and in order to stay relevant, they have to keep learning long after they leave school.

https://bdaily.co.uk/entrepreneurship/25-09-2015/brits-using-online-learning-to-boost-career-prospects/

By Erika Morphy, CMS Wire

Vancouver, British Columbia-based Hootsuite debuted an online learning portal called Podium this week that’s devoted to classes on (what else?) social media. There’s no charge for the classes and a quick preview suggests they are worth the time invested in watching them — especially since they are free, outside of a $200 fee for people who want to be certified.

http://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/hootsuite-gets-stickier-with-free-online-classes/

by Claire Zillman, Fortune

Together, the Ivy League’s online learning group and the magazine are offering courses in business strategy. The online education market got another player on Wednesday when Cornell University’s online learning group, eCornell, and Fortune announced the launch of an online business education program. The program titled “Mastering 21st Century Business Strategy” consists of six courses, each of which takes five to seven hours to complete. Participants who complete all six classes, which will cover topics like strategic positioning in markets and mergers and acquisitions strategy, will receive a certificate in business strategy from Cornell. Professor Justin Johnson of Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management designed the program, which will feature videos from several Fortune journalists.

http://fortune.com/2015/09/23/cornell-fortune-education-program/

by the University of Wisconsin

George Mosse was one of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s iconic professors: a pioneering historian with a gift for connecting the past to the present. Mosse was an authority on Nazism who himself fled the Nazi regime, writing influential works on fascism like “The Crisis of German Ideology” and “The Nationalization of the Masses.” Students flocked to his UW classes from 1955 until his retirement in 1987, drawn by his charismatic style and his insights into European cultural history. Mosse died in 1999, but a unique online course from UW-Madison’s Division of Continuing Studies is bringing his lectures to a new audience. From Oct. 5-31, What History Tells plans to recreate the exhilarating experience of sitting in Mosse’s classroom.

http://news.wisc.edu/24034

By Michael Hart, Campus Technology

How do you make sure everybody with access to information on your campus knows what they have and how to keep it secure — in an ever-changing landscape of behaviors and risks? So, are you worried about the teaching assistant in the basement of the chemistry building selling beakers to students to use in their labs? How about the system the popular pizza place across the street from campus is using to process credit card transactions? Probably not — but you should be. It’s likely those activities, and more just like them, would fly way below the radar at most institutions of higher education. However, they can make your school just as vulnerable as any information gap you might find in the admissions office.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/09/24/data-security-in-higher-ed-a-moving-target.aspx

By Corinne Lestch, Fed Scoop

Andrew Marcinek was hired by the Office of Educational Technology to work on connecting K-12 and higher ed schools to openly licensed educational resources. According to officials, Marcinek will work with “tool providers and developers, district and state leaders, and educators” to connect them to open educational resources, also known as OER, which can range from podcasts to digital libraries and games. The announcement comes as President Barack Obama once again directed his focus to a key higher education issue: trying to hold colleges accountable to students with a new website.

http://fedscoop.com/education-department-announces-new-open-educational-resources-hire-and-college-website

by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Ed

An academic social network has added a tool it hopes will shake up the system of peer review. The network is called Academia.edu, and it has grown to more than 25 million registered participants, who use it mainly to post their published papers in order to help others find them (and, it’s hoped, cite them). The site’s new tool, called Sessions, lets researchers post papers that are still in progress, and invite colleagues to comment on them so the papers can be improved before being submitted to peer-reviewed journals. Richard Price, chief executive of Academia.edu, says the intention is to recreate online what happens at academic conferences, where scholars present new research and face questions and critiques from peers in the field.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/academic-social-network-hopes-to-change-the-culture-of-peer-review/57419