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Online Learning News and Research
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Saturday, July 16, 2005
Communicating Library Services to Distance Education Students and Faculty - Martina Nicholas and Melba Tomeo, OJDLA
Academic libraries have responded to the challenge of providing resources and services to off-campus users in a variety of innovative ways. However, recent survey results indicate that users are often not fully aware of what is available to them. This study of library web sites at 100 distance learning institutions seeks to establish a checklist of best practice in terms of library resources and services provided and to establish a template for the effective distance education gateway. The results of this research will provide a comprehensive guideline for librarians seeking to institute, improve, or better communicate distance education resources and services to students and faculty. (0) comments
Electronic courses making the grade - Argus Leader
The popularity of courses delivered electronically through South Dakota's public university system is on the rise. A distance-learning report to the South Dakota Board of Regents shows that total credit hours for courses delivered electronically increased by 45 percent comparing the 2005 spring semester to the same time a year ago. Registrations for Internet-delivered courses increased 14 percent during the same time. Total student head count in all distance courses offered by the public universities was up 18 percent. (0) comments
Distance learning opens new doors to higher education - Marisa Maldonado, Winsor Heights Herald
Lorna Castro never thought she would earn a bachelor's degree online. But the single mother of a 14-year-old daughter did not consider returning to school at all until she heard of the option.... Students such as Ms. Castro are growing in number as distance education gains prominence in this country. While students say the experience cannot replace traditional secondary education, they recognize that the flexibility online education brings is unbeatable. Ken Grech, dean of the school of technology and design at Kaplan, said online degrees also can help students who have little access to a physical university, such as certain towns in Alaska where the closest institution of higher education is four hours away. "We have students right now who are in Iraq, doing their work in tents," he said. (0) comments Friday, July 15, 2005
Increasing access to Higher Education: A study of the diffusion of online teaching - Peter Shea, Alexandra Pickett, Chun Sau Li; IRRODL
Online learning environments provide an unprecedented opportunity to increase student access to higher education. Accomplishing this much needed goal requires the active participation and cooperation of university faculty from a broad spectrum of institutional settings. Although online learning has seen rapid growth in recent years, it remains a relatively small percentage of the entire curriculum of higher education today. As a relatively recent development, online teaching can be viewed through the lens of diffusion of innovation research. This paper reports on research from 913 professors from community colleges, four-year colleges, and university centers in an attempt to determine potential barriers to the continued growth in adoption of online teaching in higher education. It is concluded through factor and regression analysis that four variables are significantly associated with faculty satisfaction and their likelihood, therefore, to adopt or continue online teaching – these include levels of interaction in their online course, technical support, a positive learning experience in developing and teaching the course, and the discipline area in which they taught. Recommendations for institutional policy, faculty development, and further research are included. (0) comments
You can’t get away from distance learning - Katharine Kelly, Urban Tulsa
Grandpa’s generation, and those with a sense of history or music and cultural continuity might appreciate an old rhyme updated: “Reading, and writing and arithmetic, taught to the tune of the hickory stick” has become “reading, and writing and arithmetic, all to the tune of the computer click.” Education, at one time a forced march from grade school on up, required no little corporal punishment as the method of instilling discipline. While summer vacation is still a treasured trove of unfettered creativity, parents and society seem to have done a fair job of inculcating in students these days an appreciation for the value of education. It couldn’t have come sooner. (0) comments
Digital Text Cycles: From Medieval Manuscripts to Modern Markup - Terje Hillesund, Journal of Digital Information
The paper argues that the current implementation of digital publishing is a minor step in a long development of digital text cycles. Rather than being a revolution, the digital transformation of text is an evolutionary process heavily influenced by social and cultural factors. The paper introduces the concept of a "text cycle". An examination of basic features of paper-based text cycles and features of digital text cycles demonstrates that digital technology has a potential for change that far exceeds that of the "Gutenberg revolution". However, by applying a historical perspective, I will try to show how the deep and enduring cultural heritage of print is impeding the radical potential of digital texts. (0) comments Thursday, July 14, 2005
Learning Objects: A Rose by Any Other Name . . . - Susan E. Metros, Educause Review
Over the last three years, the buzz in educational technology circles has shifted from “What are learning objects?” to “Whatever happened to learning objects?” Learning objects evolved out of the object-oriented, reusable code protocols of computer science in the early 1990s. Since the mid-1990s, business and industry, lead by Cisco, have successfully applied a similar concept for modularizing and reusing content to streamline the creation and delivery of training. As information proliferated and affordable technologies to support learning became available and easier to use, the concept of digitally sharing and reusing high-quality educational content looked promising. David Wiley and Erin Edwards, key scholars in the learning object debate, honed the definition for education by declaring that a learning object was “any digital resource that can be reused to mediate learning.”1 Over the last few years, online repositories comprising digital resources of all shapes and sizes have sprung up in the form of large, discipline-specific and NSF-funded digital libraries, community-built repositories, discipline collections, and fee-based commercial databases. In theory, learning objects should have proven useful for packaging unwieldy educational content in ways that were easily accessible, engaging, and ideally, cost-effective. (0) comments
Trend: Podcasting in Academic and Corporate Learning - Learning Circuits
Podcasting. You may have heard the term and wondered what it meant. Or you may already be listening to podcasts and pondering how they might be used with learners. This article will provide a basic explanation of podcasting, highlight some uses in learning, offer a Q+A from a corporate supplier, and then provide links to more information. The term podcasting is an amalgamation of two other words: iPod, the popular digital music player from Apple, and broadcasting. But the pod is a bit of a misnomer. Podcasts, digital audio programs that can be subscribed to and downloaded by listeners via RSS (Really Simple Syndication), can be accessed on a variety of digital audio devices, including a desktop computer. (0) comments
E-Learning Standards Update - Ryann K. Ellis, Learning Circuits
Here’s a non-technical look at evolving e-learning standards, what the standards intend to achieve, the key players involved in developing the standards, and some implications for the future. The e-learning industry continues to expand every day, and the methods and tools necessary to create and maintain content and infrastructure applications are complicated. Enter e-learning standards. The goal of standards is to provide fixed data structures and communication protocols for e-learning objects and cross-system workflows. This enables interoperability between applications, such as an LMS and third-party or in-house developed content, by providing uniform communication guidelines that can be used throughout the design, development, and delivery of learning objects. When these standards are incorporated into off-the-shelf products, developers can base their purchasing decisions on quality and appropriateness rather than compatibility. (0) comments Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Design of the Learning Space: Learning and Design Principles - Chris Johnson and Cyprien Lomas, Educause Review
As students become increasingly digitally literate, higher education also needs to be concerned about the creation and support of virtual learning spaces. Anyone who has stood outside of a class as it is dismissed has witnessed the number of students using cellphones to call a friend or check for text messages. These “digital natives”2 are literate with the tools of the twenty-first century and remain connected through multifaceted, complex social interactions, both physical and virtual. As we design meaningful learning experiences, we need to be aware of how the potential of virtual learning space influences what happens in the formal and informal physical learning spaces. Therefore, a definition of learning space might be the following, as stated by Brown: “Learning spaces encompass the full range of places in which learning occurs, from real to virtual, from classroom to chat room.”3 (0) comments
Globally Collaborative Experiential Learning - Takeshi UTSUMI, Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education
Economic interdependence among nations and cultures is spawning a global economy. Globalisation also highlights clashes of divergent cultures and belief systems, both political and religious. If global peace is ever to be achieved, global-scale education, with the use of the modern digital telecommunications, will be needed to create mutual understanding among nations, cultures, ethnic groups, and religions. The Internet is the future of telecommunications and can be a medium for building peace. GUS has a long history of concept development and testing of multiple hardware configurations suitable for remote Internet access. These initial steps are summarized in our recent book, Global Peace Through the Global University System [Varis, et al, 2003]. The purpose of this book is to make internationally known the philosophy, past and present actions, as well as future plans of the GUS, which have resulted from years of development and a seminal working conference at the University of Tampere, Finland, in 1999. (0) comments
E Learning: Why Choose Online Education? - John Thompson, Web Pro News
The Internet boom is far from over, although it has been taking a slightly different slant in the past few years; hardly surprising as technologies advance and trends change. The World Wide Web is the largest resource of information in the whole world and whatever your needs the Internet can provide. What started as a bubble has soon become a massive tidal wave and online education is one of the areas that is still increasing, probably more than ever before. You can shop online, you can watch TV online, and you can even book your holidays online or work online and now you can complete perfectly legitimate and recognised educational courses online. Far from being the alternative form of education used solely by working parents it is becoming just as popular with teenagers and professionals all around the world. There are no boundaries to learning when using the Internet. You can study a course that local colleges and educational institutions in your area don't offer and you can do so without having to quite your job and leave home. (0) comments Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Use and Abuse of Reusable Learning Objects - Pithamber R. Polsani, Journal of Digital Information
The term Learning Object, first popularized by Wayne Hodgins in 1994 when he named the CedMA working group "Learning Architectures, APIs and Learning Objects", has become the Holy Grail of content creation and aggregation in the computer-mediated learning field. The terms Learning Objects (LOs) and Reusable Learning Objects are frequently employed in uncritical ways, thereby reducing them to mere slogans. The serious lack of conceptual clarity and reflection is evident in the multitude of definitions and uses of LOs. The objectives of this paper are to assess current definitions of the term Learning Object, to articulate the foundational principles for developing a concept of LOs, and to provide a methodology and broad set of guidelines for creating LOs. (0) comments
Educators and students click with online learning - Rachel Aicher, The Lebanon Daily Star
Educators and students from around the world gathered in Beirut this week to share their insights on how to use online project-based collaboration to empower youth. This diverse group of over 100 delegates from 15 countries met for the opening day of the third International Education and Resource Network (iEARN) Regional BRIDGE Conference, hosted by the American Community School (ACS). Noting that many participants had come from abroad, despite this year's political upheaval, Eliane Metni, iEARN-Lebanon Coordinator, described their presence as a "vote of confidence in the spirit of iEARN and of Lebanon." (0) comments
£6 million allocation delivers new ideas on e-learning - eGov Monitor
Six major projects, which aim to transform aspects of the student experience through e-learning, have been allocated £6 million by the Scottish Funding Councils for Further and Higher Education (SFC), it has been announced. The FE and HE projects include the development of materials so that Higher National (HN), modern apprenticeship and degree courses can be delivered in new ways; the use of new approaches to assessment by higher education institutions (HEIs), and FE colleges and HEIs working together to ease the transition between sectors for learners. The projects will be run by several FE Colleges and HEIs until summer 2007, and will test a key conclusion of the SFC joint e-learning report: that e-learning can produce efficiency gains for institutions by replacing existing processes. (0) comments Monday, July 11, 2005
Broadband: A Solution for Rural e-Learning? - Robin Mason and Frank Rennie, IRRODL
Rural and remote learners are disadvantaged even with online provision due to poor connections. Broadband offers a potential solution. This paper looks at the initial results of a project to install broadband services in the Western Isles of Scotland. It focuses on the educational potential of broadband and the design implications for online courses. It also considers more informal kinds of learning that broadband facilitates in rural areas. (0) comments
Online schools work on bugs - Jennifer Mrozowski, Cincinnati Enquirer
Jack Sauer, a Mason seventh-grader, wakes up, fires up the computer in his basement five days a week and starts his schoolwork without leaving the house - or even changing out of his pajamas. Jack, 13, is one of more than 17,000 Ohio students enrolled in virtual charter schools, which allow students to complete coursework over the Internet. Some virtual students are gymnasts or aspiring singers, whose schedules don't fit into a typical school day. Others have fallen behind or, like Jack, want to work at a faster pace. Though Internet-based charter schools are booming in Ohio, over the past five years, some have experienced problems tracking enrollment and ensuring that their students take state-mandated tests. The state budget bill, expected to be signed today, enforces some of the most sweeping changes to virtual school regulations since Ohio first passed a law in 1997 allowing charter schools. (0) comments
Better Welfare for Soldiers Key to Stronger Military - Jung Sung-ki, Korea Times
Educational opportunities and an improved welfare system must be offered to the ``new-generation’’ of soldiers for a ``stronger and future-oriented’’ Armed Forces, a ruling party lawmaker said Wednesday. Rep. Kim Myung-ja of the ruling Uri Party stressed the need to reform the military culture to correspond with changing social trends, and to help young soldiers develop themselves during their two years’ service, as well as to promote the human rights of service members.... The government and the ruling party earlier this week agreed on a set of reforms focusing on building an information and technology infrastructure in the nation’s military camps to provide soldiers with online education programs. Under the proposed ``e-Learning Portal System,’’ soldiers staying out of colleges due to military service are able to take regular courses for up to nine credits per year, said Kim, who is a member of the National Defense Committee of the National Assembly. About 82 percent of the nation’s enlisted soldiers are from universities or colleges, according to a recent survey. ``Without a doubt, the Internet and computers are inseparable from young people’’ Kim said. ``But after they join the military, the use of the Internet is limited to a great extent. That’s nonsense given that our country is an undisputed Internet powerhouse and the world’s most wired country.’’ (0) comments Sunday, July 10, 2005
Online learning is changing education in Montana - Gail Schontzler, Bozeman Daily Chronicle
LeAnne Yenny, a science and math teacher at Sacajawea Middle School in Bozeman, wanted to be a better teacher, so she decided to study for a master's degree at Montana State University. Yenny was able to do it at home, by taking her MSU classes online. Instead of driving to campus, hunting for parking and scurrying to a classroom after a full day of teaching high-energy seventh-graders, she'd sit down quietly at her computer at 10 o'clock at night. "It's fantastic," Yenny, 31, said last week after finishing her master's of science in science education (MSSE), designed for science teachers who want to learn more science and better ways to teach the subject. "I'm so very lucky. "I would probably have had a difficult time getting through the master's degree if I had to come to classes," she said. Still, she found that online classes required discipline, organization and commitment. (0) comments
Online option gains favor for summer school credits - Ignazio Messina, Toledo Blade
The air in Elyse Stoll's algebra class last week was hot and humid - more conducive to napping, she said, than learning. "I've never fallen asleep, but some people do," the 16-year-old Start High School senior said. "We only have one fan for the room, and it doesn't really help anyway"... But many high school students this year have chosen to forgo summer school in favor of making up failed courses online in the comfort of their homes. "Our numbers have dropped, in part because many students are doing online classes through the Phoenix Charter Academy," said Jan Kilbride, assistant superintendent of high school education at TPS. "It's a convenient way for students to work at their own pace and make up a subject." Two hundred students are taking 300 semester hours this summer with the charter academy, which is sponsored by TPS but operates independently. Before the online summer courses were offered, nearly 1,000 high school and junior high school students went to TPS classrooms for most of the summer. Nationwide, more and more school districts are offering online courses for core subjects like algebra and reading. (0) comments
Teaching the Process of Design and Implementation of an Intelligent System - Anne Venables & Grace Tan, Journal of Information Technology Education
Teaching future knowledge engineers, the necessary skills for designing and implementing intelligent software solutions required by business, industry and research today, is a very tall order. These skills are not easily taught in traditional undergraduate computer science lectures; nor are the practical experiences easily reinforced in laboratory sessions. In an attempt to address this issue, a software development project, designed to take students through a complete process of knowledge engineering, was introduced in an undergraduate Intelligent Systems subject. In this project, students were required to act as domain experts, knowledge engineers, programmers, end users and project manager in the production of a game-playing expert system. The paper describes the project, its objectives and development, as well as some of the benefits. (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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