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Online Learning News and Research
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Saturday, September 18, 2004
Best Practices for Administrative Evaluation of Online Faculty - Thomas J. Tobin, JDLA
This introductory-level presentation demonstrates how to evaluate the materials and teaching in online courses. Topics covered include similarities with evaluation of on-ground teaching, factors unique to online courses, technological considerations, helping administrators unfamiliar with online courses, and national standards, rubrics, and benchmarks. (0) comments
The Master of Distance Education Program: a Collaboration between UMUC and Oldenburg - Eugene Rubin, Ulrich Bernath, Mark Parker; JALN
The Master of Distance Education (MDE) program at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC) received the 2003 Sloan-C award for Most Outstanding Online Teaching and Learning Program. This award was given to the MDE “for an asynchronous, student-centered online graduate program that responds to the worldwide need for qualified managers of distance education programs in industry and academe.” This paper provides information about the program, the partnership and the curriculum. (0) comments
Broadband has positive impact on education says research - Public Technology
Broadband is having a marked impact on children’s education in the UK – a study has shown. OK, so the research was commissioned by BT, but its findings seem intuitive and sensible. An in-depth survey of 50 UK families by the Future Foundation revealed that two-thirds of children with broadband access were spending more time using the internet for academic purposes including research and revision. Over the three-month period of the study, the time children’s spent on-line for educational purposes increased by 19 per cent, while time spent on gaming and entertainment fell by 21 per cent. Almost every child in the study (97 per cent) used their broadband internet connection to do their homework and more than half, (58 per cent), felt that their schoolwork would suffer without it. Paul Flatters, Chief Executive Officer, Future Foundation said: “We were surprised at the proportion of time that was dedicated to education by participants, it certainly challenges traditional fears that children will primarily use the internet for entertainment. (0) comments Friday, September 17, 2004
MERLOT: A Model for User Involvement in Digital Library Design and Implementation - Flora McMartin, JoDI
The task of finding online learning materials can be a hugely time-consuming activity. The search alone is arduous, but when added to the need for intensive instructor review of those materials, and that once identified they must also learn how to use the materials effectively for teaching, the task becomes formidable. It is no wonder that the hurdles to the effective use of online learning materials are many (CSHE 2004, Gibbs et al. 2004). Whether the classroom is real or virtual, faculty and instructors seek materials that support their teaching efforts, their pedagogy and student learning goals. MERLOT's services and features are designed to help faculty and instructors overcome the hurdles associated with finding good materials (e.g. lack of time, lack of organization, overwhelming numbers of unrated materials) through the integration of peer-reviewed online materials with effective teaching practices. (0) comments
NCCU receives $2.1M federal grant - MICHAEL PETROCELLI : The Herald-Sun
N.C. Central University has been awarded $2.1 million federal grant to train novice teachers in two nearby rural counties, officials announced Thursday. A representative from the U.S. Department of Education presented Chancellor James H. Ammons with an oversized check at the university's annual convocation Thursday morning for the first chunk of a five-year Transition to Teaching grant. The funds will help train new teachers in Vance and Warren counties that have made a midcareer shift to the classroom. The federal No Child Left Behind law gives such "lateral entry" teachers have three years to earn state teaching certificates. With the grant, 25 teachers each year will be able to begin a two-and-a-half year "distance learning" program to earn their certificates from NCCU, officials said. Distance learning students take courses either face-to-face, on the Internet or through teleconferences. (0) comments
Techniques To Help E-Learning - Catherine Franz, WebPro News
e-Learning is doubling yearly. Classes, e-courses, e-books on how-to and what-to appear by the thousands online weekly. In- person seminars and workshops are limited to location and access. e-Learning allows easy access, creation, and international distribution to a whole new world of experiences -- negative and positive. Avid learners now feel like there is a smorgasbord laid out before them. It's like having teachers and trainers crowded into your den. Yet, no sooner do you buy one e-learning material, start reading, and another enticement grabs your attention that is suppose to be even better, even grander. The flow of new material never seems to end -- a high percentage poorly written. Online learning is now starting its climb up the product maturity bell curve. This means that buyer's dollars are voting, demanding, more well thought-out and written material. As an avid on-line reader, I let out a deep sigh of relief and look forward for this next wave to occur across the board. (0) comments Thursday, September 16, 2004
Making Web-based education accessible to all - Information Society Technologies
People with disabilities are frequently disadvantaged when accessing both classical education and IT-based learning. However, NEMO proved the potential for Web-based education (WBE) to help integrate disabled and elderly people into society. The IST programme-funded NEMO project took a basic online education platform and turned it into a highly adaptable and specialised tool to offer life-long learning to people with hearing deficiencies, mental disabilities and the elderly among others. Special emphasis was placed on improving the social integration, self-confidence and communication skills of users. (0) comments
Despite University of Phoenix revelations, online learning will charge ahead - Ryan Johnson, Arizona Daily Wildcat
.... Clearly, high pressure sales combined with education is a bad mix. But don't dismiss what the University of Phoenix and its 129,000 online students have started. No, this scandal doesn't signal the end of online education. Rather, it will be merely a blip in its never-ending growth. So where's the UA at? Actually, farther along than you might think. In fall 2000, the Arizona Board of Regents created what's called the Arizona Regents University. It's basically just a title for classes that are that are available to students of UA, ASU and NAU. Of the 1,700 total classes, three quarters of them are strictly online. This year, students took 40,000 classes. Imagine: no worries about classrooms. Being able to easily add more students. Taking small groups interested from three universities and creating one full class. Imagine combining the best professors from each of the three universities. So UA students would have access to NAU biology professor Paul Keim, one of the world's leading experts on anthrax, and other universities would be able to share UA chemistry professor David Spurgeon. (0) comments
More students log on to learn - Peter Schworm, Boston Globe
With a point and a click of her computer mouse, Hudson High School senior Roxanne Mutti hands in a poetry assignment to a teacher 3,000 miles away, then scrolls through messages from 19 classmates at schools that span four time zones. Mutti is among a surging number of high school students inhabiting two educational worlds. While sitting at computers in four-walled classrooms in their hometowns, they attend ''virtual" classes connected by fiber optics and Web-based bulletin boards. (0) comments Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Learning from a distance - Stephen Winslow, Augusta Free Press
The winds of change are blowing stronger then ever across the educational landscape. Many schools are looking for options they can provide students and parents a variety of educational choices that meet the goals of learning. Many of these same schools are challenged with shrinking budgets and a shortage of resources. To compensate for losses in educational tools, schools systems are turning to an alternative form of teaching/learning: Distance education. Distance education is known by many things - distance learning, Web-based training or even computer-based training. We will use the phrase distance education for this column. A definition of distance education is - a type of education, typically college-level, where students work on their own at home or at the office and communicate with faculty and other students via e-mail, electronic forums, videoconferencing, chat rooms, bulletin boards, instant messaging and other forms of computer-based communication. (0) comments
How does one take the distance out of distance education? - Mary Mitchell, Kay Ruhle, and Doris McManus, techLearning
At Florida Virtual School, one way we strive to do that is through our online clubs. We believe our clubs create a four-way community involving parents, students, teachers and the school. The clubs promote camaraderie among partners usually vastly removed from each other. Like clubs in a traditional setting, they also allow for further exploration of the subject beyond the school lesson. Presently, we have three clubs: the Science Club, the Junior Classical League, and our newspaper, News In a Click. These clubs are outgrowths of the respective classroom disciplines. (0) comments
Internet links 8 Jordanian universities - Jordan Times
The Ministry of Information and Communications Technology on Monday launched a broadband Internet network to link eight state universities — a key step in educational reforms. "We want students and professors to work hand in hand to make the best of this network," His Majesty King Abdullah told the universities' presidents yesterday in a videoconferencing session at the University of Jordan after the launching of the network. "This is a very important step, and we hope to see all universities connected to this network." The network would allow students to use videoconferencing, a nationwide e-library, distance learning and continuous communication. (0) comments Tuesday, September 14, 2004
University of Illinois at Springfield Awarded First Research Grant for Inter-Institutional Team Teaching Project
Elluminate, Inc., a leading provider of live eLearning and Web conferencing solutions for education, and Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C), an association of academic institutions and organizations that share information about effective online learning, announced today that they are working together to research and develop synchronous eLearning best practices. As part of the program, one of the first of its kind, the two organizations have instituted an ongoing research grant program for qualified academic institutions. The recipient of the first grant, the University of Illinois at Springfield (UIS), will use its yearlong, 25-seat Elluminate Live! Academic Edition(TM) license for a wide range of synchronous communication activities among students and faculty members. (0) comments
College is just a click away - Mary Mosquera, GCN Staff
Going off to college used to mean packing all one's worldly possessions into a steamer trunk for a long trip to a faraway campus. But now, getting to college can be as simple as logging on to the Internet. Many state colleges and universities are expanding their use of online learning systems to reach more students in rural areas and serve growing student populations while containing costs. E-learning enrollment at the University of Florida has doubled every year since 2000, with more than 75,000 student seats in 1,300 courses. State laws require the school to offer information on food and agricultural concerns to communities around the state as well as to individual farmers. An e-learning system makes a wider array of resources available to those who want to pursue a formal certification program or just get gardening information specific to the state, said learning support systems manager Doug Johnson, who chairs the University of Florida Course Management System Advisory Group. (0) comments
FIT opens doors to all - Fiji Times
Higher education has never been more accessible now than ever before thanks to the Fiji Institute of Technology. FIT director Kolinio Meo said there was no limit to the number of students they could enrol nor a limit on the age group. "FIT now has the avenues to make tertiary education accessible to everybody in Fiji by going out to them and providing them with the materials," he said. He said there were three easy ways of taking tertiary education closer to the people - through face-to-face learning, the Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) course and the Open Distance Learning programme (ODL). Mr Meo said a large number of people fell in the ODL programme. "They are the ones who were not able to reach the minimum entry requirement but are interested in pursuing tertiary education," he said. (0) comments Monday, September 13, 2004
Penn plays active role in expansion of Internet2 - byron kho, Daily Pennsylvanian
Internet2 has become an even greater driving force in the internationalization of education at Penn within the past year.In cooperation with industry, government and other academic institutions, Penn was instrumental in the initial development of Internet2, a second-generation project meant to extend the broadband capacities of the original Internet for high-end research and educational purposes. Today, this specialized network is used all over the University to advance research projects and improve international cooperation through such applications as real-time, high-bandwidth videoconferencing, distance learning and intensive data transfer. (0) comments
Hewlett Foundation Awards $1.5 Million for National Repository of Online Courses
The Monterey Institute for Technology and Education today announced the receipt of a $1.5 million grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to support the distribution of high-quality online courses to students and teachers worldwide. The National Repository of Online Courses (NROC) will house high school, Advanced Placement, and higher education courses that will be distributed through a network of state departments of education, online schools, teacher groups, charitable organizations, and free, public web sites. (0) comments
Community in the Digital Age - Review by Arun Kumar Tripathi, Ubiquity
"Community in the Digital Age," Andrew Feenberg and Darin Barney, 293 pages, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (August 15, 2004), ISBN: 0742529584 The new book "Community in the Digital Age" discusses the questions: Is the Internet the key to a reinvigorated public life? Or will it fragment society by enabling citizens to associate only with like-minded others? Are virtual communities "real" enough to support the kind of personal commitment and growth we associate with community life, or are they fragile and ultimately unsatisfying substitutes for human interaction? How is the Net affecting our culture and what should be the language of the Net? What if the Net became central in our lives? What if it becomes what Joseph Nye, dean of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, calls an "irresistible alternative culture?" (0) comments Sunday, September 12, 2004
Growing Virtual Communities - Debbie Garber, IRRODL
Abstract: As online collaborative technologies become easier to use, an increasing range of “virtual communities” are being established, often for educational purposes. This report stresses that an efficient technology is only part of the process underlying a successful online community. It considers the social process on which an online learning community must be founded if it is to flourish and be useful. Definitions of community, learning community, and virtual learning community are reviewed, and the experience of an online community member is discussed. The importance of nurturing the community’s health, and the natural life cycle of a virtual community, are examined. (0) comments
Much ado about Bard's texts online - Will Sturgeon, CNET News.com
William Shakespeare, the Warwickshire wordsmith, was paid a posthumous compliment this week, when the British Library made available 21 of his works on the Internet. High-resolution images of 21 original texts, in 93 different versions, are available on the British Library Web site. Leafing through virtual page after virtual page, people will be able to read the plays in the same format that Shakespeare himself and the actors who performed his plays for the Globe audiences did. Unlike many commonly read texts, the quarto editions digitized by the British Library were compiled during Shakespeare's life. They are as close to the real deal as many fans of the Bard will ever have seen. (0) comments
Acadient Partners With Thomson Learning to Provide Online Business Courses for Higher Education
Acadient, a leading developer and distributor of online learning for the higher education and financial services industries, today announced it has signed an agreement to license content from Thomson Learning, a leading provider of learning content. With one of the largest courseware libraries in the financial services industry, Acadient continues to expand its presence in the higher education and distance learning markets by creating and delivering fully customizable online course materials along with tailored marketing and analytical support. Acadient has significant strategic partnerships with leading publishers, colleges and universities, and technology enablers focusing on the developing online learning sector. (0) comments Online Learning News Blog Archives OTEL - Ray's Home Page - Notebook - UIS Online - U of I Online - UIS Home Fair Use |
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