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Online Learning News and Research
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Saturday, November 07, 2009
Online Learning Tool?: Next wave may sweep all aside - Adam Turner, the Age
Every now and then, someone develops a new way of thinking about an old problem. Email has become so bogged down with spam and other problems that for many people it's all but useless. Attempts to make email more secure have struggled to make headway because the email system was never designed with such things in mind. The boffins at Google — well, actually Lars and Jens Rasmussen, who brought us Google Maps — asked "What would email look like if we set out to invent it today?" Their answer is Google Wave, a free service that has the potential to change the face of the internet. (0) comments
Scotland Flu outbreak pupils to net online learning classes - Edingburgh Evening News
School pupils are expected to turn to online learning this winter if the swine flu pandemic intensifies as predicted. Heriot-Watt University's online programme Scholar, which helps Scottish pupils studying for Highers and Advanced Highers, is already gearing up to accept a much greater volume of hits. Professor Phillip John, Dean of Science and Engineering at Heriot-Watt and executive chair of the Scholar forum, said: "The Scholar team is aware of the Scottish Government planning exercises concerned with school closures. (0) comments
Online Learning Fast Becoming a Valued Tool in Papuan Universities - Jakarta Globe
Distant learning over the Internet that has been developed with the standardized competence-based curriculum, is contributing to improvements in education quality, especially in universities in Papua, an expert says. “E-learning, or online study, makes use of electronic technology that facilitates the students and instructors in communicating with each other in an atmosphere unencumbered by protocols like class schedules,” Suaib Halim, a professor of informatics technology, said in Jayapura on Monday. “However, the programs used in e-learning should be based on national education standards [or KBK],” Suaib said. (0) comments Friday, November 06, 2009
Most College Students To Take Classes Online by 2014 - David Nagel, Campus Technology
Nearly 12 million post-secondary students in the United States take some or all of their classes online right now. But this number will skyrocket to more than 22 million in the next five years, according to data released recently by research firm Ambient Insight. According to Ambient Insight Chief Research Officer Sam S. Adkins, already some 1.25 million students in higher education programs take all of their classes online, while another 10.65 take some of their classes online. The two groups are still outnumbered by students who take all of their courses in physical classrooms, which Ambient Insight reckoned at 15.14 million as of 2009. But this situation will change drastically by 2014, at which time, Adkins forecast, only 5.14 million students will take all of their courses in a physical classroom, while 3.55 million will take all of their classes online, and 18.65 million will take some of their classes online. (0) comments
Swine Flu School Closings Drive Students to Online Learning and Tutoring
As concerns over the Swine Flu virus continue to mount across the country, an increasing number of schools may opt to take matters into their own hands, sending kids home to wait out what they perceive will be the peak of the flu pandemic. The U.S. Department of Education recommends that some districts, schools, and states have some of the resources and capabilities for the distribution of instructional content via the Internet. Moreover, it urges the provision of audio-visual learning supports that can be made available on the Internet using online learning and other Learning Management Systems. (0) comments
Online learning offerings keep Yakima students in school - ADRIANA JANOVICH, Associated Press
Carolyn Kondor completed her freshman year at Yakima's Eisenhower High School. But it was a struggle. At Ike, the teen says, there were too many students, too many distractions, too much stress. There was just "too much of everything." So, about three months into her sophomore year, she transferred to the newly formed Yakima Online! She's a senior now, 17, and still enrolled in the online high school. Her sights are set on graduation in June. "It's a good fit for me," she says. "I love the people here. It's easygoing, but it keeps you on track." (0) comments Thursday, November 05, 2009
More high school students are taking online learning courses - Julie Hubbard, Macon.com
Mary Persons High School is too small to hire someone to teach Chinese to the lone senior who wanted to take the course this year. But the school managed to work around it. During second period, senior Christopher Kennedy takes the class online via the state’s “virtual school.” He watches taped lectures and listens to audio of the language on a computer in the media center. "It’s not the most exciting way to do it, but it gets the job done,” said Kennedy, who hopes to major in international business one day. (0) comments
iNACOL's Susan Patrick on Trends in eLearning - David Nagel, THE Journal
At last count, there were more than 1 million enrollments in K-12 online schools in the United States. And according to recent research, the number of students taking courses online will jump to more than 10 million in the next five years. But even with this rapid growth (up from zero enrollments in the mid-1990s), online education is only beginning to address the needs of American students. What's standing in the way of even more widespread adoption? What have we learned so far in these early years? And can any of what we've learned be applied in traditional classrooms? To address these questions, we spoke with Susan Patrick, president and CEO of iNACOL, the International Association for K-12 Online Learning. iNACOL is an advocacy and research organization that focuses on issues in K-12 online schooling. (0) comments
Georgia Colleges expanding online learning - Daniel Bell, Rome News-Tribune
Three of Rome, Georgia’s higher learning institutions have joined in online learning, and administrators say they have plans to expand their online offerings and take learning beyond the classroom.At Georgia Northwestern Technical College, students have a variety of choices for online learning. The college offers courses that are taught entirely online, courses that are considered hybrid, meaning that about 50 percent are taught in a classroom, and courses that are Web enhanced, meaning only parts of the classes, such as testing, would occur on the Internet. Georgia Highlands College has been offering online courses for a few years. This semester Highlands has 948 students taking 37 entirely online classes and 204 students taking 12 hybrid classes. Offering online courses is part of Shorter College’s strategic plan, says Sean Butcher, director of online programs for the institution. (0) comments Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Analysis: Mo. cuts could unplug online learning school - DAVID A. LIEB, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Budget cuts could force a Missouri school to close midway through the academic year, leaving students with half-earned credits scrambling to complete their education. Some students, just a few credits shy of graduation, could wind up as high school dropouts. Others, struggling with cancer, could miss their only chance to earn a degree. The school in question is the Missouri Virtual Instruction Program, which offers Internet-based online learning courses for everyone from kindergartners to high school seniors. The online public school began just three years ago and already has served a couple thousand students. About half the children are taking courses to supplement their education in traditional public or private school classrooms. For the other half, the online school is their only school. (0) comments
10.5 Million PreK-12 Students Will Attend Classes Online by 2014 - David Nagel, THE Journal
More than 2 million preK-12 students take some form of schooling online right now--whether attending a virtual school for all their classes or just taking one or more courses via the Internet. But while the vast majority of students will continue to take all of their courses in physical classrooms over the next five years, the number of students taking courses online will jump to more than 10 million by 2014, according to data released recently by research firm Ambient Insight. (0) comments
The genius brothers behind Google Wave - John D. Sutter, CNN
Lars and Jens Rasmussen were broke and jobless -- with only $16 between them -- when they made it big in the Web world by selling their idea for Google Maps. Years later, after finding cushy employment at Google Inc., the Rasmussen brothers flew in May from Sydney, Australia, to California where they would debut their sophomore product, a Web application called Google Wave, which they say, quite audaciously, will kill e-mail and forever change online communication. (0) comments Tuesday, November 03, 2009
CMC's teleweb and online learning enrollment virtually explodes - John Stroud, Aspen Times
Colorado Mountain College has seen a 14 percent increase in enrollment districtwide this fall, but many of those students can't be found in the classroom. That's because they're enrolled in the college's various distance learning courses — classes taken via high-tech delivery modes such as Teleweb, interactive video systems and on the Internet. Enrollment in CMC's distance learning courses has jumped 41 percent this semester, compared to last fall. That's in line with trends at other colleges in Colorado and around the country, said Daryl Yarrow, CMC's vice president overseeing distance online learning. (0) comments
Using online learning technology to teach technology - Betsy Friedrich, Omaha World-Herald
Keeping one high school class on track can be hard enough, but try teaching many classes at once and things can get tricky. Corliss Dixon, Pleasanton High School's former business and computer teacher, came out of retirement this year to teach a technology class using the school's distance-learning room. Students from 14 schools around the state watch Dixon live on their computers while she teaches in front of a camera and monitor in Pleasanton. (0) comments
New Online Distance Learning Database Focuses On International Development - Medical News Today
An online database of more than 140 distance learning courses was launched by Distance Learning for Development (DL4D), a project of the London International Development Centre (LIDC). The website www.dl4d.ac.uk provides information about the University of London's high-quality international development-related postgraduate courses, including Climate Change and Development, Globalisation and Health, Education and Understanding Poverty. The courses are primarily designed for international development practitioners, involve up to 240 hours of study and can be used towards acquiring higher-level qualifications. They are delivered using a range of media, including the latest online learning tools, CD-Rom and print-based materials. (0) comments Monday, November 02, 2009
Incorporating Social Networking in a Programming Course based on Learning Styles and Technology Preferences - Nauman Saeed, et al; JETS
The adoption level of emerging web technologies is on the rise in academic settings. However, a major obstacle in the practice of web-based instruction is the limited understanding of learners’ characteristics and perceptions about technology use. Thus there is a need to understand the relationship between students’ learning styles and their preferences for instructional strategies, including the use of emerging web technologies. Since learning styles provide information about individual differences in learning preferences they can suggest how instruction can be best designed to support the learning preferences. In this paper, a research framework has been proposed to incorporate emerging web technologies into higher education based on students’ learning styles and technology preferences and a case study has been carried out to validate the proposed framework. An action research methodology has been adopted to carry out the study, which comprises of conducting a survey about students’ learning styles and technology preferences; incorporating a combination of emerging web technologies based on the survey findings; and analyzing key achievements and shortcomings of the study to redefine research objectives. The study provides support for the proposed framework by highlighting the significant relationships (0) comments
Against all Odds: A Video-Based Study of Learner-to-Instructor Interaction in International Online Learning - Jean-Marie Muhirwa, IRRODL
Distance education and information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been marketed as cost-effective ways to rescue struggling educational institutions in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This study uses classroom video analysis and follow-up interviews with teachers, students, and local tutors to analyse the interaction at a distance between learners in Mali and Burkina Faso and their French and Canadian instructors. Findings reveal multiple obstacles to quality interaction: frequent Internet disconnections, limited student access to computers, lack of instructor presence, ill-prepared local tutors, student unfamiliarity with typing and computer technology, ineffective technical support, poor social dynamics, learner-learner conflict, learner-instructor conflict, and student withdrawal and resignation. In light of the near death of the costly World Bank-initiated African Virtual University (AVU), this paper concludes by re-visiting the educational potential of traditional technologies, such as radio and video, to foster development in poor countries. (0) comments
Missouri Expands Statewide Online Education Offerings - Scott Aronowitz, THE Journal
The Missouri Virtual Instruction Program (MoVIP) has moved to expand substantially its online course offerings to Missouri public school students with its new membership in the National Repository of Online Courses (NROC). The NROC courses are now available to all public school students, teachers, and administrators in the state of Missouri. In addition, a partnership between the group eMINTS (enhancing Missouri's Instructional Networked Teaching Strategies) and MoVIP will provide professional development training to educators how to use the NROC courses in conjunction with their own curricula and integrate them into their students' long-term educational plans. (0) comments Sunday, November 01, 2009
Applying Multimedia and Virtual Reality for Online Learning Environments - Paulo N. M. Sampaio,et al, i-JET
Most of the tools and languages for modeling Virtual Reality environments, such as VRML, X3D, Java3D, etc. do not provide means of describing the synchronized presentation of multimedia content inside these environments. Multimedia has demonstrated its capabilities of motivating users and capturing their attention, which are important characteristics when we want to provide a higher degree of immersion and learning capabilities inside Virtual Reality applications. This paper presents a robust and generic solution for the integrated presentation of different kinds of media objects inside virtual environments based on the Graphical Engine OGRE and how this solution can be applied broadly for providing customizable multimedia andvirtual learning environments. (0) comments
Authoring Systems Delivering Reusable Learning Objects - J. Schreurs, R. Dalle & George Sammour, i-JET
A three layer e-learning course development model has been defined based on a conceptual model of learning content object. It starts by decomposing the learning content into small chunks which are initially placed in a hierarchic structure of units and blocks. The raw content components, being the atomic learning objects (ALO), were linked to the blocks and are structured in the database. We set forward a dynamic generation of LO's using re-usable e-learning raw materials or ALO’s In that view we need a LO authoring/ assembling system fitting the requirements of interoperability and reusability and starting from selecting the raw learning content from the learning materials content database. In practice authoring systems are used to develop e-learning courses. The company EDUWEST has developed an authoring system that is database based and will be SCORM compliant in the near future. (0) comments
Authoring for Adaptive Web-Based (online) Learning Systems: A Case Study - Hala Obeidat, M. Meccawy and P. Blanchfield, iJET
Adaptive Educational Hypermedia aims to provide tailored and personalised learning experiences to different students. However, one of its limitations which have resulted in its poor adoption by the e-learning community is the complexity of its authoring process. This paper tries to address this issue in order to push those adaptive systems forward. First, it presents an authoring aid for an existing adaptive system. Lessons learned from this case study are then used to provide a high-level design specification for an authoring tool with an accessible interface to ordinary teachers with limited IT-skills. (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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