Online Learning Update

By Tyler Collins, Newswire

Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education Magazine Poses Five Must-Ask Questions to Ask Before Choosing an Online College. Hispanic higher education students looking to simplify their search for the right online degree program need to look no further than the May issue of Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education Magazine, which features a list of five essential questions students should ask before investing in any online program. This issue also spotlights 10 notable online programs for students pursuing an MBA degree. “Online learning is very attractive alternative route for Hispanic students seeking degrees. It can be less expensive than traditional brick and mortar options and afford them the flexibility of fulfilling family obligations and work commitments while pursuing higher education,” says Mary Ann Cooper, editor in chief of Hispanic Outlook Magazine. “That’s why we felt it was important to give Hispanic students the information and tools they need to make the best possible choice among online learning options.”

http://newswire.net/newsroom/pr/00092466-hispanic-outlook-magazine-lists-online-learning-options.html

By Matthew Reisen, Daily Lobo

According to UNM press release, the University’s best online courses are being recognized in an awards ceremony on Thursday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the SUB ballroom, sponsored by the UNM Center for Teaching & Learning. In 2012, the University of New Mexico Provost Chaouki Abdallah tasked the Online Course Advisory Council to establish online course standards. Standards that are grounded in research-based practices, according to the release, reflect Higher Learning Commission and federal requirements for online distance teaching and learning. The initiative was intended to address quality course development, effective teaching and learning, outcomes assessment and academic integrity, according to the release.

http://www.dailylobo.com/article/2016/04/27-online-course-recognition-brief

By Molly Bloom, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

This is what Sharell Latimore fears: That she’ll graduate from Atlanta’s Crim High School, enroll in college and find out she’s “the dumbest one there.” Crim is one of two Atlanta high schools that switched over the past two years from classes taught by teachers to “blended learning,” where students sit in classrooms clicking through online lessons as teachers supervise. Advocates say this lets students learn at their own pace and get help from a teacher when they need it. Atlanta’s West End Academy, another alternative school, has successfully used blended learning for more than a decade, school staff say. But the results from Atlanta’s latest and largest move to teach students who have struggled in traditional classrooms through online instruction have been decidedly mixed.

http://www.myajc.com/news/news/local-education/switching-struggling-students-to-online-classes-sh/nrCHR/

by Froma Harrop, Providence Journal

It’s ludicrous that student debt has passed $1 trillion and that nearly 20 percent of the undergraduates who borrowed for college are in default on their student loans. Happily, there exists an alternative to four bankrupting years on campus. There’s almost no learning, be it liberal arts or STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), that can’t be had free — or close to it — online. MOOCs (massive open online courses) are perfectly suited to disrupt the campus model.

http://www.omaha.com/opinion/froma-harrop-online-classes-are-good-alternative-to-mountains-of/article_76e8d1b4-2ce1-52b8-bc14-06646b324faf.html

By Ashley Milne-Tyte, Marketplace

An online learning startup called MasterClass raised a big round of funding — $15 million. It uses not academic celebrities, but the real US Weekly kind to teach its courses: from best-selling author James Patterson on writing, to Oscar winners Dustin Hoffman and Kevin Spacey on acting. Learning singing from Christina Aguilera or acting from Spacey is pretty tempting. You pay $90 for a five-hour course. Richard Garrett, chief research officer at Eduventures, said a company like MasterClass isn’t a rival to online higher education, but they share some challenges.

http://www.marketplace.org/2016/02/23/world/master-class

By Danielle Wirsansky, ULoop

As soon as your online course begins, try reaching out. Begin building a community from the get-go. It will be much easier to do and the other students will be much more receptive to it if you start at the beginning. Make interactions with your fellow online classmates a habit so that when you actually need their assistance, you already have a support system in place. If you wait until the last minute, when it is an emergency and you really need someone’s assistance, it might be too late. No one might be interested in or willing to help you when you really need it. You might not need any help like that at all, but why take a chance? Be prepared for what might happen. And if someone else needs help, help them! Give them the help that you would want to receive if you were in their situation. What you give is what you will get.

http://www.uloop.com/news/view.php/199371/How-To-Connect-With-Students-In-An-Online-Course

by Adam Gordon, Forbes

MBA@UNC students are currently required at a three-day real-world event twice during their degree, choosing their date and location from a schedule of quarterly gathering in the U.S. and around the world. Recent locations were San Francisco, London, Shanghai, Detroit, and Budapest. But beyond this they can and do join residential students for part of their program, for example taking a traditional study-abroad option. And, as the online program garners quality recognition, residential students are asking to take classes on it. Through this, what is coming into focus is a user-oriented “hybrid” education offering where students choose from a portfolio of real-world and online options, making the best tradeoffs they can according to the kind of graduate or executive education experience they seek, or that their situation will allow.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamgordon/2016/04/25/unc-mba/#5fd776b4691a

by Chris Chafin, Fast Company

“It kind of fooled me at first,” Kinsella told me. “It said, ‘Congratulations, you’ve been admitted to the University of Florida.’ But shortly after, I discovered it was actually the ‘Path to Campus Enrollment.’ Is that what it’s called? The PaCE program.” Kinsella had been accepted to a year-old program at UF that lets students who don’t quite make the cut for traditional admission take their first two years of classes online or at a community college for a 25% discount in tuition. They can start taking classes on UF’s campus only after they earn 60 credits, and start as juniors. This combination of online and offline education is new, but gaining in popularity. Many institutions around the country, including the University of Colorado and , offer so-called hybrid degrees for bachelor’s or master’s students in many fields of study. This is all part of an expansion in online education that’s been progressing fitfully for most of this decade, an experiment involving millions of young people whose results are far from certain.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3057949/when-your-dream-school-accepts-you-but-only-online

by Anjuli Bhargava, Business Standard

I see the world becoming more unbundled, more micro – in everything. Learning is life long. As things stand, do you know that only 25 per cent of students in the US actually follow this model of going to college at 18 and finishing in four years ? Most of them take up a job after high school, some come back later, some join college and drop out. We have launched on edX a micro master’s. Why should you get a full master’s ? You can get micro credentials. Say you are doing a BA in Math. But you want to work as a computer programmer. You can take a micro master’s in programming from edX. By the time you have your BA in math, you can have your masters too and get a job in programming if you like. These new micro credentials are just-in-time learning in the right field. We think that is the future. We think in the future the concept of a degree will be questioned too. Why do we need a four year degree ? Why does India need a three year degree – 95 per cent who earn the degree can’t be employed in any case.

http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/micro-master-s-is-future-of-online-learning-anant-agarwal-116042000050_1.html

By Sarah Kuta, Daily Camera

The University of Colorado is starting to see some revenue from the free, massive open online courses it offers to the world through the website Coursera. Though course content is still free, students are beginning to pay for certificates showing they’ve completed a CU course or a multi-course unit in the same subject. Since September, these online course certificates have generated roughly $110,000 across the CU system, a number that is likely to go up this spring with the launch of new multi-course units, said Deborah Keyek-Franssen, associate vice president for digital education and engagement for the CU system. That’s been somewhat of a welcome surprise, as CU did not necessarily expect to make money when it began offering the courses three years ago, Keyek-Franssen said.

http://www.dailycamera.com/cu-news/ci_29802803/cu-system-reaping-benefits-massive-open-online-courses

by Gloria Cordes Larson, Forbes

I believe it’s critical to commit to a lifetime of learning. Everyone needs to refresh their mind from time to time and learning new skills helps develop new talents that often lead to exciting new aspects of your career. As the leader of a university responsible for developing tomorrow’s leaders, I tell my graduating students that earning their degree is a tremendous accomplishment, but if they want to continue advancing then the learning doesn’t stop after graduation. Whether they plan to go on to obtain an advanced degree, they take online courses to learn the latest social media tools or brush up on the latest enterprise software, it’s critical to keep acquiring new skills.

http://fortune.com/2016/04/24/bored-with-job/

By Tara García Mathewson, Education Dive

In hospitals, population health management uses predictive analytics to separate patients into cohorts by risk level and assign supports accordingly, and some colleges are starting to look to the strategy as a model for addressing retention. Inside Higher Ed reports new research from EAB shows promising results for colleges that have organized their advising services based on the population health management model, in which about 70% of people are categorized as low risk, 25% as medium or rising risk, and 5% as high risk. Middle Tennessee State University implemented a new model based on the healthcare strategy in fall 2014, hiring more advisors and focusing their efforts on high-risk students, who were identified through analytics as those with low GPAs, and it saw a 3.4% increase in retention in one year.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/what-can-higher-ed-learn-about-retention-from-the-healthcare-industry/417779/

By Tara García Mathewson, Education Dive

Colleges and universities are spending more money on recruitment to attract students in an increasingly competitive field, and Noodle Partners CEO John Katzman calls it an arms race in need of regulation. For Inside Higher Ed, Katzman writes that people are paying attention to the spending spree on campus amenities but not the runaway costs of student recruitment, which ultimately increases the cost of higher education without improving services for students. Katzman suggests a bill that would limit subsidized student loans to the actual cost of education or a new U.S. Department of Education regulation that would limit tuition sharing deals at schools whose marketing budgets get too high.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/marketing-could-become-the-most-expensive-part-of-higher-ed/417777/

By Tara García Mathewson, Education Dive

Higher education marketing is more competitive now than it has ever been before, and it’s only getting worse. Some 70% of chief academic officers say online education is going to be a key pillar of their institution’s strategy moving forward, and demand for online education programs is growing at a slower rate than at any point in the last 20 years. In a conversation about the growth potential of online higher education and the marketing challenges presented by modern competition, Cornell University’s Ashley Budd highlighted the concerns of enrollment professionals who have been trying to get around the shrinking population of traditional college-goers for years. But online education is a dangerous place to look for salvation, given the trendline of demand. “That’s really a scary reality,” Helix’s Seth Odell said. “If you’re turning to online education to solve an enrollment problem, it’s going to be a really difficult problem to solve.” There are now 450 online MBA programs competing for students.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/supply-is-up-in-online-ed-but-demand-is-down-now-what/417722/

by Seb Murray, Business Because

Udacity’s announcement marks the latest innovation among Mooc makers, which are increasingly moving beyond free courses with high drop-out rates and into paid-for, professional education. Udacity’s “Nanodegrees” are monetized. Coursera, a rival, runs “Specializations”, and charges users for certificates, and enrolment, to some courses. Online students are uploading certificates of competition to job sites like LinkedIn. And employers, such as Google, Amazon, and Adobe, are hiring them. “As more online degree recipients enter the workplace, and employers learn that many can perform as well as those with traditional degrees, the momentum to be more accepting of such programs grows,” said Patrick Mullane, executive director of HBX, Harvard Business School’s digital learning initiative. Educational leaders believe online learning is one way to close critical skills gaps, in areas such as data science and web development.

http://www.businessbecause.com/news/mba-distance-learning/3926/udacity-embraces-blended-campus-online-learning

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

“Open” has gone mainstream. The world now celebrates Open Education Week. The U.S. Department of Education announced an “Open Education” or #GoOpen initiative and ran its first “@GoOpen Exchange” to get schools and educators committed to the use of open educational resources (OER). Students at Ithaca College, The College of William & Mary and Santa Barbara City College are all pushing their schools to adopt OER. Multiple colleges and universities are trying out no/low-cost OER degree programs. Amazon looks to be getting into the OER business with “Inspire.” And a bipartisan group of Congressional staffers recently held a briefing to learn from experts why they should care about OER. The demand for free learning content may be loud and clear now, but, back in 2013 when Campus Technology first surveyed the top sources for free digital textbooks, the OER world seemed a quieter, less tweeted place. What hasn’t changed, though, is that faculty and students still want to know where to go to find the goods.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/04/20/the-price-is-still-right-15-sites-for-free-digital-textbooks.aspx

By David Raths, Campus Technology

When it comes to open educational resources (OER) adoption, is the glass half empty or half full? On the one hand, more than 1 billion works have been licensed using Creative Commons since the organization was founded 15 years ago, and in 2015 alone Creative Commons-licensed works were viewed online 136 billion times. Yet awareness of OER in higher education remains low. Approximately 75 percent of faculty respondents to a 2014 Babson Survey Research Group study didn’t know about or couldn’t accurately define OER or why it is important. Changing that situation is the mission of Cable Green, director of open education at Creative Commons and a leading advocate for open policies that ensure publicly funded education materials are freely and openly available to the public. “We still have a huge awareness-raising effort that needs to be done,” said Green. “We all need to teach other people about what this is and why it is important.”

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/04/21/oer-in-higher-ed-huge-awareness-raising-effort-needed.aspx

By Christopher Snowbeck, Star Tribune

Employers and a large health insurer are considering a new way of reaching people with social anxiety and depression. Many who suffer from social anxiety, depression and other mental health problems won’t seek help from a therapist. However, they may find a sense of community in online discussion groups and “anxiety blogs,” said Dale Cook, the chief executive and co-founder of Learn to Live, a Minneapolis-based start-up. The company sells access to online courses for people struggling with mental health issues, and touts its strategies for engaging with sufferers. “They’re looking for online resources because they don’t want to tell anyone, or they don’t have time to go” for face-to-face therapy, Cook said in an interview. “We’re able to identify places where sufferers go to commiserate and suffer together and say: Have you found anything that works?”

http://www.startribune.com/employers-insurers-see-promise-in-self-directed-online-therapy/376658941/

BY WILLIAM FENTON, PC Magazine

I’m not about to let my ideological reservations foreclose my curiosity, especially given that so many Online Master of Science Computer Science students praise the program. A $6,600 master’s degree in computer science with a 55 percent acceptance rate and no GRE entrance exam? It’s a seductive proposition for an undergraduate, to be sure. Since the Georgia Institute of Technology announced its Online Master of Science Computer Science degree—OMS CS, for short—in May 2013, the program has elicited wonder, enthusiasm, and trepidation. When you consider the age of students, the OMS CS program is older (33-34 years old) and more educated (more than 700 applicants have advanced degrees and more than 120 hold Ph.D. or terminal degrees). In this sense, the Georgia Tech online master’s program is more in line with ventures such as General Assembly, which enable professionals to advance skills and training.

http://in.pcmag.com/coursera/102725/opinion/dont-dismiss-georgia-techs-6600-online-masters-deg

By Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology

Arizona State University’s online Global Freshman Academy (GFA) is rolling out adaptive software to help tens of thousands of students work through its College Algebra & Problem Solving course. The GFA program, delivered via massive open online course (MOOC) provider edX, will be the first to utilize McGraw-Hill Education’s ALEKS adaptive learning product in a MOOC format. “To date, more than 17,800 students from 186 countries have registered for the College Algebra & Problem Solving course using the ALEKS program, which will provide students with individualized learning and instruct them on the topics they are most ready to learn,” according to a press release from McGraw-Hill Education.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/04/18/asus-global-freshman-academy-taps-adaptive-software-for-math-students.aspx

BY SARAH KUTA, DAILY CAMERA

The University of Colorado is asking its faculty and staff to get creative and develop new, fully online degree programs to launch in the fall of 2018. The CU system is calling for online degree program proposals until July 15, with grants being awarded by Sept. 30. CU hopes to select three winning grant proposals and award each team $200,000 for course development. Faculty selected for the grant will receive a $15,000 stipend, with staff members receiving a $5,000 stipend to support the logistics of course development. Students must be able to complete the degree completely online and in three calendar years, though they won’t be required to work within that time frame.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/university-3-online/