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Online Learning News and Research
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Saturday, February 05, 2005
eArmyU expands laptop eligibility - Army News Service
Eligibility for the Army Continuing Education System's eArmyU program's laptop option has expanded to include most active-duty specialists through staff sergeants who re-enlist. The Army launched eArmyU in 2001 to offer eligible active-duty enlisted Soldiers the opportunity to work toward a college degree or certificate online. The program began with selected installations and so far more than 54,000 Soldiers have taken courses from 29 institutions. With the program's expansion to the entire Army in October 2004, the eArmyU "Technology Pack" or laptop option was offered solely as a retention and readiness tool in support of Army Transformation. (0) comments
Distance education programs booming - ASHLEY SIMMONS, Daily Tarheel
Recent increases in the number of people using distance education highlights the overwhelming desire of working people to obtain higher education. According to the Online Directory of Schools’ Distance Learning Programs Web site, an estimated 2.3 million people will have taken advantage of distance learning by the year 2010. “(Distance education) is educational reality,” said Sandra Compton, an employee of the Iredell County branch of the N.C. Cooperative Extension. Compton has taken distance education classes. (0) comments
Feds fight phony online degrees - Corey Murray, eSchool News
Students or adult professionals who turn to the internet for online degrees promising brighter futures in a matter of weeks--or even days--should think twice when presented with offers that appear too good to be true, U.S. Department of Education (ED) officials say. ED on Feb. 1 unveiled a new web site, intended to crack down on the swath of phony online degrees that have begun cropping up in both private and public sector jobs in recent months. Rather than take a job applicant's word for it, employers now have at their disposal a master list of accredited colleges, universities, and career and vocational schools against which to verify an applicant's credentials. (0) comments Friday, February 04, 2005
Server Outage - Blog down Feb2-Feb 4
My sincere apologies for the loss of feeds the past three days. A catastrophic server crash required an entire re-build of the server hosting this blog. We are now back up and running. -ray (0) comments Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Semantic Services in e-Learning: an Argumentation Case Study - Emanuela Moreale and Maria Vargas-Vera, Journal of Educational Technology & Society
This paper outlines an e-Learning services architecture offering semantic-based services to students and tutors, in particular ways to browse and obtain information through web services. Services could include registration, authentication, tutoring systems, smart question answering for students’ queries, automated marking systems and a student essay service. These services – which might be added incrementally to the portal – could be integrated with various ontologies such as ontologies of educational organisations, students and courses. In this paper, we describe a few scenarios in the e-learning domain and illustrate the role of a few services. We also describe in some detail a service doing semantic annotation of argumentation in student essays for allowing visualization of argumentation and providing useful feedback to students (0) comments
Virtual Reference: Alive & Well - Brenda Bailey-Haner, Library Journal
The value of virtual reference services has been questioned in recent articles, including two by Steve Coffman and Linda Arret—both early adopters of the service. They wonder if virtual reference can ever be self-sustaining without being subsidized with LSTA (Library Services and Technology Act) money and caution librarians to examine carefully the options before launching a virtual reference service. They cite grim statistics and scary costs. But that's hardly the whole picture. (0) comments
60 Minutes Says For-profit Colleges Mislead Students - University Business
In a "60 Minutes" piece, broadcast Sunday, Jan. 30, 2005, several colleges owned by Career Education Corporation were accused of misleading students, leaving them with sup-par education and training, while burdening them with thousands of dollars in students loans to repay. Additionally, schools like CEC's Brooks College were said to pressure admissions officers into signing up students clearly unfit for college. During the segment a 60 Minutes producer posed as a would-be student for CEC's Sanford-Brown College. During the admissions interview, which was taped with a hidden camera, the prospective student is admitted for training in healthcare, even though she admits to her admissions counselor that she was a "stoner" in high school and had bad grades. Several former admissions officers described themselves as being no better than "used car salesmen" who were forced to focus only on their sales numbers. (0) comments Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Evaluating the Cost Effectiveness of Online and Face-to-Face Instruction - Sharon Jeffcoat Bartley and Jennifer H. Golek, Journal Ed Tech and Society
Online instruction is gaining an increasing presence due to the benefits associated with it, including the ability to consolidate education and training across geographical and time constraints, and the claim by many that online education and training is cost efficient. This paper provides a relatively concise and useful history of online learning, and a discussion of issues to be faced by the professional who intends to move the education and training environment online in response to the current academic and business environments. It presents a cost matrix tool by which the costs of online education and training can be tabulated and/or compared with the costs of the traditional education and training medium. (0) comments
Faileigh Dickinson University Global Issues Gateway
Fairleigh Dickinson University’s new Global Issues Gateway Web site (http://www.gig.org), is a portal to news and views from throughout the world. This impressive new resource serves students of all ages, teachers and all global citizens. Global Issues Gateway features original content from the FDU community and articles and reports from a wide range of sources, selected by faculty editors. The editors select articles and features relating to their fields and post them, or links to them, on the site, says Jason Scorza, professor of philosophy and political science on the Metropolitan Campus, who is the general editor of Global Issues Gateway. “The goal,” he said, “ is not to be a comprehensive outlet for information and news, but rather a very selective digest that focuses exclusively on issues that truly transcend boundaries and cultures in a meaningful way.” Subsections of the Web site focus on culture, economics, ethics, science and politics. (0) comments
Want to take a college course? Study online - Barb Berggoetz, Indianapolis Star
Hoosiers are signing up for online college courses in record numbers as students flock to expanding Internet degree programs. An estimated 28,000 students took courses online, by cable, videotape or even DVD -- called distance learning -- in 2003-04. That equals about 10,000 full-time students, slightly above the enrollment at the University of Southern Indiana and only about 1,000 fewer at the University of Notre Dame. "There is a large untapped market still out there when you think of the adults who don't have a postsecondary education," said Susan Scott, director of e-learning for the Indiana Higher Education Telecommunications System. (0) comments Monday, January 31, 2005
The New Challenges for E-learning: The Educational Semantic Web - Lora Aroyo and Darina Dicheva, Journal of Educational Technology & Society
The big question for many researchers in the area of educational systems now is what is the next step in the evolution of e-learning? Are we finally moving from a scattered intelligence to a coherent space of collaborative intelligence? How close we are to the vision of the Educational Semantic Web and what do we need to do in order to realize it? Two main challenges can be seen in this direction: on the one hand, to achieve interoperability among various educational systems and on the other hand, to have automated, structured and unified authoring support for their creation. In the spirit of the Semantic Web a key to enabling the interoperability is to capitalize on the (1) semantic conceptualization and ontologies, (2) common standardized communication syntax, and (3) large-scale service-based integration of educational content and functionality provision and usage. A central role in achieving unified authoring support plays the process-awareness of authoring tools, which should reflect the semantic evolution of e-learning systems. The purpose of this paper is to outline the state-of-the-art research along those lines and to suggest a realistic way towards the Educational Semantic Web. (0) comments
MWCC's online courses bring the classroom to the student - Mandy Sheffield, Sentinel and Enterprise
Donna Ballentine became disabled in 1998 after she was severely injured in a car crash on Route 2. The New Salem resident wanted to pursue a career in business management, but the accident left her in a wheelchair, making it all but impossible to get to a campus. Instead of driving to school and worrying about how she was going to get her wheelchair out of the van, Ballentine decided to enroll in online courses at Mount Wachusett Community College. "For me, it's much better because you have access to the professors," she said. "You can talk with them, chat, e-mail -- the format is easier." (0) comments
Big net attack tipped in next 10 years - Brian Kladko, the Age
Don't say we didn't warn you: At some point in the next decade, there will be a "devastating attack" on the internet or power grid. That scenario was deemed most plausible by 1300 technology experts and scholars in a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Other predictions that drew the most agreement: We'll be watched more closely by government and businesses through computing devices embedded in clothes, appliances, cars and phones. Most students will spend part of their day in "virtual classes," grouped online with others who share their abilities and interests. And the boundaries between work and leisure will be blurred - in other words, expect to hear from your boss anytime, anywhere. (0) comments Sunday, January 30, 2005
From Distance Education to Distributed Learning Surviving and Thriving - Kathleen Matheos and Walter Archer, Online Journal of Distance Learning Admin
Higher education is currently undergoing what may be its most significant change since the advent of the printing press in the fifteenth century. A number of socioeconomic forces, primarily globalization, have increased student mobility and created a need for increased and more flexible access to education. At the same time, the recent vast expansion of electronic communication capability has presented us with the means to provide the desired increased access, using various types of distributed learning. Having this tool at hand has, in turn, created a demand for new levels of administrative flexibility on the part of educational institutions while at the same time increasing budgetary pressures on them (Clarke 2002). (0) comments
Irish e-learning projects vie for EU cash - Charlie Taylor, Electric News
Nine Irish projects have been shortlisted for an EU programme that aims to promote cooperation in the field of open and distance learning and ICT in education. The e-learning projects have all been selected for approval under Minerva -- the European Union's open and distance learning programme. Minerva, which has been in existence since 2000, seeks to promote the use of information and communications technology (ICT) in education. The initiative also aims to ensure that academic considerations are given proper weight in the development of ICT and multimedia-based products and services. In addition, it promotes access to improved methods and educational resources. (0) comments
Online education makes dream come true - Richard Haddad, Payson Roundup
When Debby Rusovick applied for advanced training at work, upper management told her they preferred someone with a bachelor's degree. "Being a person that does not like to be told I can't do something I really want to do, I decided to go to school and earn that degree," Rusovick said. With all that society demands from a working mom, Rusovick decided to research schools that offered online distance-learning programs. "Next, I had to choose the degree I wanted to earn. (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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