Online Learning Update

by Pat James-Hanz, Evolllution

Since its inception, online programming has continued to evolve to better meet the needs of its students, mainly non-traditional, part-time learners with competing priorities. Great strides have been taken to create rich, engaging experiences for online learners, and colleges have looked to the adoption and implementation of different tools and strategies to support this transformation. In fact, in pushing to create these engaging student-centered experiences for online students, many online leaders have stumbled onto administrative processes that would significantly enrich the traditional and on-campus student experience as well.

http://evolllution.com/opinions/student-centered-approach-of-online-ed-could-enrich-on-campus-student-experience/

By My Central New Jersey

Some of the nation’s top experts in online education and hybrid learning will share innovations and best practices at the Rutgers Online Learning Conference (RUOnlineCon) Jan. 11-12, 2016. The conference will explore available and emerging technologies, use of learning management systems, ancillary software and sites, new instructional methods, assessments, audio/video elements, and faculty training and resources. Joining Jeff Selingo as speakers are Deb Adair, managing director and chief planning officer, Quality Matters, a nonprofit dedicated to quality assurance in online education; Ray Schroeder, founding director, Center for Online Leadership, UPCEA, a leading association for professional, continuing and online education; Joan Bouillon, director of regulatory compliance, Pearson, an international education company; and Kenneth Ronkowitz, senior designer, New Jersey Institute of Technology.

http://www.mycentraljersey.com/story/news/local/2015/12/17/online-learning-conference-rutgers/76333330/

By Sydney Smith, Central Michigan Life

Since the first online class was offered in 1994, Central Michigan University has expanded its online academic programs by more than 130,000 student credit hours. While undergraduate on-campus students taking online courses through Global Campus has increased, off campus numbers have decreased. In 2007, almost 110,000 student credit hours were made up of off campus students. In 2015, that number is just above 98,000. To address the decreasing number off off campus online enrollment, the Board of Trustees initiated a task force to study national trends and competitor institutions for online academic programs. Dean of the College of Education and Human Services Dale-Elizabeth Pehrsson chaired the new online academics program committee, launched in July.

http://www.cm-life.com/article/2015/12/bot-online-education

BY MERIS STANSBURY, eCampus News

According to a new report, incorporating Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in online courses not only benefits students with disabilities, but can have significant benefits for all students, ultimately increasing retention and improving learning outcomes. UDL is tough enough in a face-to-face environment, but the real challenge might be how to implement the principles in an online world where students’ abilities and learning styles differ drastically. The recent report, written by three professors at Montana State University, aims to help educators involved in online learning implement UDL for teaching both general and diverse populations, including students with disabilities. The authors note that while, ideally, UDL allows students with disabilities to access courses without adaptation, it can also help to improve learning—and, therefore, retention—among all students.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2015/12/17/10-steps-for-making-your-online-courses-accessible-for-all-students/

by Jon Russell, Tech Crunch

Springboard, an India-U.S. company formerly known as SlideRule, has raised a $1.7 million seed round to accelerate its concept of learning through engagement with others. It has adopted individual mentors, who provide a weekly catch-up session with their students, while partnering with other MOOCs for course content, creating its own where it sees gaps in the market. The funding comes from some pretty prominent names, including LinkedIn cofounder Allen Blue, Princeton Review founder John Katzman, InMobi founder Naveen Tewari, and Wharton School professor Kartik Hosanagar. Also participating was 500 Startups, Blue Fog Capital and clutch of angel investors that include WhatsApp business lead Neeraj Arora, ex-Facebook VP Greg Badros, Dropbox engineering head Jea-Deniz Greze, and LinkedIn VP Dan Shapero.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/17/springboard-raises-1-7m-for-its-mentor-based-approach-to-online-learning/

by Jarret Cummings, EDUCAUSE

The general higher education policy environment often impacts the interests of EDUCAUSE members. As we consider that environment in 2015 and look ahead to 2016, continued inaction on reauthorizing the Higher Education Act leaves major issues in limbo, such as accreditation reform, federal financial aid access for nontraditional providers, and the role of competency-based education. Whether Congress can act on those concerns in an election year is an open question – they may await a new President and Congress in 2017.

http://er.educause.edu/blogs/2015/12/higher-education-policy-what-2015-means-for-2016

By Michael Hart, Campus Technology

The New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development plans to introduce a residency-based online teacher education program that students — teacher interns — can complete virtually. The program, if approved by state representatives, will combine online coursework with immersive on-site experiences as the students work toward a graduate degree. The program is targeting teacher residencies in high-needs schools — those in which new teachers often report a lack of adequate preparation and high attrition rates. Students will be mentored by NYU faculty, who will be able to use video technology to observe classroom instruction at a distance and work one on one with students to improve their teaching skills.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/12/16/nyu-steinhardt-plans-online-teacher-residency-program.aspx

By Nicole Freeling, University of California

Launched in January 2013, UC’s Innovative Learning Technologies Initiative (ILTI) has supported the development of 80 online undergraduate courses, with dozens more in development. Subjects range from psychology and pre-calculus to more esoteric topics. The courses – which are as rigorous as in-person courses – carry unit credit, and many count toward specific graduation or major requirements. Some 29 are now open for enrollment for the coming term. “I thought about teaching an online course for years, but I didn’t have the resources to put it together,” said UC Santa Cruz faculty member Susan Schwartz. ILTI offered funding and the technical and instructional design support she needed to develop a course on the geology of national parks, which she now co-teaches with UC Davis professor David Osleger and UC San Diego professor Jeff Gee.

http://universityofcalifornia.edu/news/online-learning-biochemistry-basque

By C. RAMSEY FAHS, Harvard Crimson

Researchers find a strong correlation between socioeconomic status and MOOC completion. While the average MOOC user lives in a neighborhood with a median income $11,998 above the national average, the difference is $23,181 among 13 to 17-year-olds, an age range of critical importance in determining post-secondary focus, the researchers say. EdX publishes online courses created by dozens of partner schools. HarvardX, also founded in 2012, is Harvard’s MOOC-production arm.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/12/16/new-moocs-study-access/#mce_temp_url#

by eCampus News

Lexis Learn, legal research tool from LexisNexis, is expanding with more modules research. LexisNexis Legal & Professional has announced the upcoming release of new modules to Lexis Learn, the interactive teaching tool for legal research. Lexis Learn is an outside-of-class learning and testing tool that complements the Legal Research and Writing curriculum by strengthening practical skills and delivering ways for faculty to assign material and track student participation and understanding. Students learn new content from videos-—freeing up valuable class time to explore content in-depth. Earlier this year, LexisNexis launched another online teaching resource, the redesigned Interactive Citation Workstation (ICW), which teaches first year students proper citation format using state-of-the-art quiz, tracking and assessment tools.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/law-schools-research-098/

By Mary Sell, The Decatur Daily

Education leaders say community colleges need to offer better pay and benefits to attract and retain qualified instructors. Alabama’s Calhoun Community College recently created a process control technology program to train people for high-tech, high-level industry jobs, like those that will be available at the recently announced GE Aviation plant in Limestone County. But finding qualified instructors has been a problem. “I can’t even get people to apply,” Calhoun President James Klauber said last week. “They’re paid so well in private industry.”

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/community-colleges-struggle-685/

By Meris Stansbury, eCampus News

The initial results of the survey focused on cataloging the roles and responsibilities of faculty and staff who design and deliver curricula at 30 colleges and universities and four public university systems within C-BEN. The institutions surveyed include community colleges, colleges, universities, and state systems, public, nonprofit, and for-profit schools. 143 individuals from these institutions responded to the C-BEN survey. “In recent years, questions about the role of faculty members in CBE programs have been raised by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General, regional accreditors, and in the higher education press,” writes Cleary. “With increasing scrutiny and attention being paid to CBE programs, it is vital to develop a clear picture of what faculty are and are not doing in competency-based programs.”

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/cbe-programs-faculty-665/

By Meris Stansbury, eCampus News

The implementation guidelines are part of a recent report written by Dr. Cindy Ann Dell, assistant professor, Educational Theory and Practice at MSU; Thomas Dell, assistant professor, Rehabilitation and Human Services at MSU; and Dr. Terry Blackwell, professor and chairperson, Rehabilitation and Human Services at MSU; which aims to help other professors and curricular specialists in online learning implement UDL for teaching both general and diverse populations, including students with disabilities. The authors note that while, ideally, UDL allows students with disabilities to access courses without adaptation, it also helps to improve learning—and, therefore, retention—among all students.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/guide-udl-online-188/

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

Content mining of archival materials can make for amazing discoveries. Here’s how to prepare for the coming influx of researchers who will want access to digital archives as a data source. Today’s digital archives are more than a repository of content — they are a new data source for researchers. The computationally-intensive research being performed in the digital humanities, for example, can chart data such as word frequency, proximity, source and other factors to 32 dimensions across decades of previously published journals, newspapers, annual reports or other documents — in a matter of hours. “The human mind can’t even conceive of what that would be, but the computer can do that,” said Darby Orcutt, the assistant head of collection management at North Carolina State University Libraries. Orcutt and Iris Hanney, president of Unlimited Priorities, a firm that consults with both libraries and vendors with archival collections, recently shared their advice for how to approach the business of content mining with digital archives.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/12/15/7-tips-for-data-mining-your-digital-archives.aspx

by Steven Mintz, Inside Higher Ed

As long as aviation pioneers tried to mimic birds, controlled, heavier-than-air human flight proved impossible. Along somewhat similar lines, it is only by breaking decisively from traditional face-to-face models that it will be truly possible to create the kinds of immersive, social experiences in online education that will truly engage students and promote high levels of attainment among broad profiles of students. If online learning is to be more than a pale imitation of the face-to-face experience, educational innovators must rigorously address and radically rethink four key facets of online education: Motivation, learning acquisition, the student experience, and assessment. In designing our online experiences, the University of Texas System’s Institute for Transformational Learning and our faculty partners have adopted an approach that is outcomes-driven, modularized, personalized, gamified, and activity-based (and also bilingual).

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-beta/reimagining-online-education

By MELISSA KORN, Wall Street Journal

Now, Georgia Tech and a few other schools—including Arizona State University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—are still trying to incorporate the technology of MOOCs into their credit-bearing academic programs. But they aren’t necessarily sticking to the original definitions of massive or open, instead settling on some hybrid of traditional MOOCs and more modest online degrees. Students must meet certain admission requirements, pay for official university recognition, such as getting actual school credit, and, at MIT, even go to campus. The Georgia Tech online computer-science program is relatively massive: It has 2,789 students enrolled this semester, compared with 312 in the campus-based version. It’s on track to turn a profit by May,

http://www.wsj.com/articles/online-degree-hits-learning-curve-1450055726

by Richard Feloni, Business Insider

Your education shouldn’t stop when you leave the classroom. Learning new skills is a great way to expand your mind and get ahead in your career — and it’s easier than ever with a plethora of online classes just a click away. A good place to start is with this year’s most popular Coursera courses from top universities. They range from an introduction to the programming language Python to mastering the art of negotiating. All are free, but some have paid versions that offer more extensive experiences. Read on to see this year’s top 10, courtesy of Coursera.

http://www.businessinsider.com/most-popular-coursera-courses-of-2015-2015-12

By Mattan Griffel, The Times-Picayune

Online learning is revolutionizing the way people build our careers. Comprehensive programming and design courses enable us to hone and develop new skills, make massive career shifts, and earn more money. Seems like a win-win for employees and employers alike. But some hiring managers are still skeptical of online training and fall back on a college degree as the standard for a good hire. That reality is changing, but there’s still a high threshold for proving your worth through e-learning. So how do you persuade potential employers that you’ve done more than watch a few unvetted YouTube videos on how to code an app? Follow these three steps to win them over on both you and the value of your online learning.

http://www.nola.com/careeradvice/2015/12/3_ways_to_use_online_learning.html

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

Faculty leadership may not be as strongly felt in competency-based education (CBE) programs as it ought to be. Only 15 percent of CBE faculty and staff members are tenured or on the tenure track and only about one in five (19 percent) participate in shared governance activities. What this suggests is that CBE programs don’t have the kind of independent faculty oversight common to more traditional instructional formats. These results come out of a recent survey done by the Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN) among its membership, a group of schools that offer competency-based programs. (Competency-based education assesses learning based on a student demonstrating mastery of a given concept or skill rather than on the amount of time he or she has spent in the classroom.)

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/12/03/faculty-role-in-competency-programs-still-evolving.aspx

by Associated Press

New Mexico Highlands University is using federal funds to expand opportunities for Native American students through a new distance-learning system. The effort calls for the installation of new technology that will allow students at six Diné College locations in Arizona and New Mexico to access advanced classes offered by Highlands University, which is hundreds of miles away. Nearly a half-million dollars is being provided by U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development through a distance-learning telemedicine program. New Mexico Highlands University also recently announced the creation of an indigenous knowledge center within its school of social work.

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/briefs/highlands-university-partners-with-dine-college-on-distance-learning/article_20ff550b-9e96-5778-9f58-cd9782a15a9d.html

by Seth Stephenson, KSLA

Arkansas State’s fall graduation took place Saturday morning, but those who did their work online received a little more. Online graduates got the chance Saturday to meet their instructors in person. The goal of the event was to offer those students a place to celebrate and thank their instructors. Maria Munoz-White graduated with a master’s degree in Public Administration and said she was grateful to have this opportunity after all the work. “You know a lot of schools don’t do that,” Munoz-White said. “An online program is just like a person behind a computer and then you think they’re done with you. This is great. I’m so proud that I’m part of this.”

http://www.ksla.com/story/30732894/arkansas-state-online-graduates-meet-face-to-face