Online Learning Update

By Josh Tolan, Business.com

Workforce training has never been exciting. Employees are given a handbook they need to read, a course to complete or a workshop to sit through. It’s not an effective method, but time and budget constraints restrict employers from improving their educational processes. Technology is removing these barriers. New tools are changing the way employees learn on the job and are improving the process for both employees and employers. Here are some of the ways technology is causing employee training to evolve.

http://www.business.com/technology/4-ways-technology-is-changing-on-the-job-training/

By Brett Milano, Harvard

Harvard Divinity School senior lecturer Diane Moore has modest goals for her upcoming online course, “World Religions Through Their Scripture.” The course, which launches this spring, will bring together Harvard’s leading scholars in the world’s major religions: Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam. As a HarvardX MOOC (massive open online course), it was designed to attract an international, multicultural audience. Moore, a senior lecturer on religious studies and education, a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions, and director of the Religious Literacy Project, has long been an advocate of “religious literacy,” meaning an understanding of how religion works in its cultural and political contexts.

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/02/a-religion-course-for-the-internet-age/

by Gabrielle Russon, Orlando Sentinel

Emily Long refuses to stay in her apartment all day, even though she won’t physically go to class until she is halfway through her bachelor’s degree at the University of Florida. “I’m like never home,” says Long, who rents an apartment 15 minutes from campus. “That’s a good thing.” Her friend Ethan Cassidy sometimes can’t shake the notion that he is missing out as he takes his online courses. To combat that, he has found friends whose paths to UF are similar. Cassidy and Long are among the 235 students in the second semester of their freshmen year under a new UF program that was criticized when it was announced a year ago.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/education/os-uf-online-only-student-20160212-story.html

by WCET

Based on data accumulated by the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) surveys from the Fall of 2014, the WCET Distance Education Enrollment Report 2016 highlights differences by sector, graduate vs. undergraduate study, student location, and by the number of institutions educating students at a distance. Our aim is to enlighten readers about the current state of the industry through graphs, data tables, observations, and commentary based on our insights.

http://wcet.wiche.edu/initiatives/research/WCET-Distance-Education-Enrollment-Report-2016

by Alex Fitzpatrick, Time

On Feb. 12, Udemy announced that more than 10 million students have taken one of its courses. In the U.S., there were about 13 million students working toward a four-year degree during fall 2015 semester, according to the Department of Education. It is another example of the rising popularity of online education as college costs have boomed in the United States. Americans hold $1.2 trillion in student loan debt, second only to mortgages in terms of consumer obligations. Entering the workforce deep in the red could be a handicap that follows graduates the rest of their careers, economists say.

http://time.com/4215787/udemy-dennis-yang/

by Linda C. Hodges, Tomorrow’s Professor

Faculty typically spend a lot of time teaching—over 20 hours of a 50-hour workweek in one study (Bentley and Kyvik 2012). Are we spending that time productively? Obviously, whether or not we feel productive depends on what we hope to accomplish as instructors. For example, virtually all the faculty surveyed in the 2013–14 Higher Education Research Institute Faculty Survey felt that two learning outcomes were particularly key: 
developing students’ abilities to think critically (99.1%) and promoting students’ abilities to write effectively (92.7%). If these are our top goals for student learning, how do we direct our time most efficiently to achieve them? As more data become available on how people learn, the answer to this question may lie in our use of the flipped classroom.

https://tomprof.stanford.edu/posting/1463

By Meris Stansbury, eCampus News

Final Online Report Card highlights switch in enrollments for specific institutions; shows that if online learning hasn’t happened yet, it probably won’t. Online learning enrollment may be up across the board, but one type of institution is climbing up the online enrollment ladder at a breakneck pace; and some institutions may be giving up on online learning before they start. These are some of the major findings from the 2015 Survey of Online Learning conducted by Babson Survey Research Group in partnership with the Online Learning Consortium (OLC), Pearson, WCET, StudyPortals, and Tyton Partners. The results are part of the Online Report Card, the thirteenth and final annual report tracking online education in the U.S.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/online-learning-data-345/

by Lauren Rubenstein, Wesleyan

Wesleyan’s creative writing specialization is open to anyone with a love of reading or a drive to invent a story or tell their own. Wesleyan’s creative writing specialization on Coursera provides an opportunity to learn from some of the country’s best contemporary writers. Wesleyan will present the first-ever creative writing specialization on the Coursera platform, beginning Feb. 9. Taught by four award-winning authors, the specialization is open to anyone with a love of reading or a drive to invent a story or tell their own. Titled “Creative Writing: The Craft of Story,” the specialization will include four courses, plus a capstone.

https://newsletter.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2016/02/09/creativewritingcourcera/

By Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed

The best part of my job is the opportunity to work with folks at the beginning of planning an online learning program. Whether these colleagues are from my own institution, or from a peer institution, I always say the same 10 things.

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/10-ways-fail-when-creating-online-program

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

Even as online course registrations continue to rise, fewer academic leaders consider online learning critical to their “long-term” strategies or rate the learning outcomes in online education as equal or superior to face-to-face instruction, according to a new report from the Babson Survey Research Group. This year’s Survey of Online Learning was sponsored by Pearson, the Online Learning Consortium, StudyPortals, Tyton Partners and the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies. While the number of students taking at least one online course was just 3.9 percent higher in 2015 than the previous year, private nonprofit schools saw a major uptick: a growth of 11.3 percent. Private for-profit institutions, on the other hand, saw distance enrollments shrink by 2.8 percent.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/02/09/survey-even-as-online-course-enrollment-rises-institutional-support-shrinks.aspx

By Toni Fuhrman, Campus Technology

Augustine of Hippo, who lived from A.D. 354 to 430, might be surprised to find his Confessions in circulation today, including a number of e-book versions. Still widely read, popular in great books programs and studied in university classes, The Confessions of St. Augustine is autobiography and confession, spiritual quest and emotional journey. One of the most recent electronic versions of the Confessions is an interactive app developed at Villanova University (PA), the nation’s only Augustinian Catholic University. Released three months ago on Augustine’s birthday (Nov. 13), the Confessions app is required for all freshmen as part of a “foundation” course.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/02/09/interactive-app-brings-4th-century-thinker-to-life.aspx

By Peter Sclafani, eCampus News

Some of the country’s most-followed CIOs on social media outline how others can get started, what to avoid. Being a higher-ed leader, like a Chief Information Officer (CIO), at an institution today also means being active on social networking sites. For example, CIOs at universities across the county are being asked to help their institution’s brand outreach and community growth by embracing Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms, like LinkedIn.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/social-media-profile-676/

BY JESSICA LI, Daily Princetonion

After traditional, in-class lectures were replaced by ones held online, lecture ratings for COS 126: General Computer Science improved from 3.3 to 3.8, according to Professor of Computer Science and COS 126 course head Robert Sedgewick. COS 126 is the largest course in the University by annual enrollment, with 318 students having completed it in the fall semester and 405 students currently enrolled for the spring semester, according to the Office of the Registrar. COS 126 lectures, coined as ‘flipped lectures,’ have been offered exclusively online since this past fall semester, according to Sedgewick.

http://dailyprincetonian.com/news/2016/02/cos-126-ratings-improve-after-switching-to-online-lectures/

By Tara García Mathewson, Education Dive

Michael Kinsley writes for The Washington Post that the Internet may be higher education’s great disruptor, bringing down traditional institutions by taking away the power of prestige. The prestige factor that enshrines the nation’s most elite institutions comes with the selective admissions process, but when anyone can access the course content offered to the privileged few, Kinsley posits the $200,000 education may not seem so worth it. While online, for-profit universities have not yet posed much of a threat to the Harvards and Yales of the higher education sector, there is a chance that they’ll get better 10 or 20 years down the line, or that MOOCs will get better, and information once reserved for the privileged few can be had by many more, for far less.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/will-the-internet-remove-traditional-higher-eds-prestige-factor/413466/

by Architecture and Design

A new online learning platform has been launched for the benefit of architects, engineers and designers to help them hone their skills in digital design. Launched by the Institute of Digital Design Australia (IDDA), the digital design online learning platform is customised for the target group and offers over 300 e-learning lessons in digital design software including Revit, Rhino3d, Grasshopper and Python, enabling members to learn at their own pace. Founder Dr Benjamin Coorey (PhD), a digital design specialist and expert in parametric design techniques, explained that he wanted to leverage his background in teaching digital design to architects and students to develop an online learning platform customised for the industry. Another objective was to make the cutting edge learning program as affordable as possible for students as well as small, large and international architectural firms and universities.

http://www.architectureanddesign.com.au/news/idda-launches-new-online-digital-design-learning-php

by the Online Learning Consortium

Multi-year trend shows growth in online enrollments continues to outpace overall higher ed enrollments. Online Report Card – Tracking Online Education in the United States, is the 13th annual report of the state of online learning in U.S. Higher education. The 2015 Survey of Online Learning is conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group and co-sponsored by the Online Learning Consortium (OLC), Pearson, StudyPortals, WCET and Tyton Partners, is the leading barometer of online learning in the United States. Key report findings include: A year‐to‐year 3.9% increase in the number of distance education students, up from the 3.7% rate recorded last year. More than one in four students (28%) now take at least one distance education course (a total of 5,828,826 students, a year‐to‐year increase of 217,275). The total of 5.8 million fall 2014 distance education students is composed of 2.85 million taking all of their courses at a distance and 2.97 million taking some, but not all, distance courses.

http://onlinelearningconsortium.org/read/online-report-card-tracking-online-education-united-states-2015/

By Tara García Mathewson, Education Dive

A group of investors has agreed to purchase Apollo Education Group, owner of the for-profit college chain University of Phoenix, in a $1.1 billion cash deal. The New York Times reports that the buyers include Chicago-based investment firm Vistria Group, whose founder, Marty Nesbitt, has close ties to President Barack Obama and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, and whose COO, Tony Miller, served as deputy secretary of the Obama Department of Education from 2009 to 2013. While the investors hope to help clean up the for-profit industry with the purchase and plan to run the University of Phoenix with “the highest ethical standards,” critics of the sector and the purchase say the new team will have trouble doing so, given their obligations to shareholders — especially as they bought out Apollo Education Group shares for about 30% more than its stock was worth on the market.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/apollo-education-group-to-go-private-in-11b-sale/413574/

BY TANYA ROSCORLA, Center for Digital Education

Though the Americans with Disabilities Act has clear accessibility requirements, very rarely does anyone come knocking on college doors to find out whether they’re abiding by the law. The University of Illinois Springfield also encourages faculty members to adopt the Universal Design for Learning framework, and gives them the option to collaborate with instructional designers and faculty developers as they create their courses. With this strategy, the Center for Online Learning, Research and Service can take care of most students’ needs and work with the Office of Disability Services on technology accommodations for those who require extra support. “Sometimes we think, ‘Well, if we create an office of accessibility, we’ve done all we need to do,’ but it’s so much more than that,” said Vickie Cook, director of the Center for Online Learning, Research and Service at University of Illinois Springfield. “It’s really everyone’s job to think about accessibility, and that work is never done. Accessibility is an ongoing role and responsibility for everyone across campus.”

http://www.centerdigitaled.com/higher-ed/The-Struggle-to-Make-Online-Courses-Accessible-in-Higher-Ed.html

By Jon Phillips, eCampus News

Dell Education gives insight into 2016’s higher ed-tech advancements. This will be an incredible year for advancements in technology and we will see considerable implications and opportunities in education, from more personalized and meaningful learning to an evolving shift in learning environments. Based on our longtime work in higher education and ongoing conversations with our customers and stakeholders, we’ve identified a few areas where we expect technology to play a larger role for educators and students.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/technologies/higher-ed-tech-170/

by eSchool News

Students using Front Row’s adaptive, gamified technology increased end-of-year test scores by nearly 10 percentage points over those who did not. A new study from WestEd, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research agency, commissioned by Front Row Education, found that students using the adaptive, gamified and data-drive technology showed greater mathematics achievement outcomes when compared with students who did not. The study included more than 450 kindergarten, first and second grade students in a rural school, and is based on student scores on the Northwest Evaluation Association’s’ (NWEA) Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) in mathematics.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2016/02/05/study-adaptive-gamified-approach-can-boost-math-scores/

by David, RealClimate

My free online class on Coursera.org entitled Global Warming I: The Science and Modeling of Climate Change has already served 45,000 people (started, not finished) in the four times that it’s run. Now it’s set up in a new format, called “on demand mode”, which allows people to start, progress, and finish on their own calendars. This would be an advantage if a teacher wanted to use the material to supplement a class; there are no longer any time constraints built into the Coursera system to prevent that.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/02/new-on-line-classes-and-models/