Online Learning Update

November 23, 2012

MOOC Brigade: Can Online Learning Courses Keep Students from Cheating?

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:10 am

By Kayla Webley, Time

Last week, the American Council on Education (ACE), a Washington-based higher education organization that represents college presidents, announced that it would be using a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to begin evaluating a handful of courses from Coursera, a MOOC provider that launched in April, to see if they are worthy of college credit. ACE, which has some 1,800 member schools, will apply the same evaluation method it has used for years to assess other non-traditional training programs including those offered by the military or in the corporate world. EdX, which was co-founded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University in May, is expected to make a similar agreement with ACE soon, and on Nov. 18, announced partnerships with two community colleges that will blend edX classes into their existing curriculum.

http://nation.time.com/2012/11/19/mooc-brigade-can-online-courses-keep-students-from-cheating/

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Gates Backs MIT Online Course Offering at Community Colleges

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:05 am

By John Lauerman, Business Week

Two Boston-area community colleges will offer an adapted version of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology online course in computer science with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Bunker Hill and MassBay community colleges will list the course — Introduction to Computer Science and Programming — beginning early next year, officials from the colleges said today. The course will combine materials from MIT and Harvard University’s EdX online teaching venture with classroom sessions, they said in a statement.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-11-18/gates-backs-mit-online-course-offering-at-community-colleges

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Dept. of Ed. taps online learning startup Knewton for at-risk youth program

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:01 am

By Ki Mae Heussner

Over the past few years, education technology startup Knewton has helped mostly college students improve their skills across a range of subjects with its digital learning program that adapts in real-time to students’ performance and activity on the system. Now, the Department of Education is looking to Knewton to help replicate its success among the country’s at-risk youth. On Monday, at the Summit on Education in Correctional Facilities, convened by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, education leaders are set to announce that New York-based Knewton and publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will partner for a program to bring personalized math, language arts and other instruction to 3.5 million youth in the juvenile justice system. “The goal is to help transition them to traditional schools and prepare them for the workforce,” said David Liu, Knewton’s COO.

http://gigaom.com/2012/11/19/dept-of-ed-taps-online-learning-startup-knewton-for-at-risk-youth-program/

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November 22, 2012

10 TED Talks Perfect For the Online Learning Industry

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:10 am

by eLearning Industry

Does eLearning kill creativity? Bring on the eLearning revolution! What do you believe about open-source learning? What eLearning developers can learn from kids? Would you teach at the 100,000 student classroom? What have you learned from online education? The idea behind TED is in the power of inspirational talk that will change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. At the following 10 TED Talks you will find fascinating ideas that worth spreading, and that are perfect for the eLearning Industry

http://elearningindustry.com/subjects/concepts/item/340-10-ted-talks-perfect-for-the-elearning-industry

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Tweeting Learning Online – All Discussion Happened via Twitter

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:06 am

By Alisha Azevedo, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Students at George Mason University shifted their feet and chatted outside a classroom here on Tuesday morning, waiting for Stephen Groening’s class on cellphone cultures to begin. On tap was not an ordinary classroom discussion about the assigned readings. Instead, the entire conversation would take place by Twitter, and students were nervous. Some had created Twitter accounts just for the class, while others were not sure how the discussion would go. “I am completely overwhelmed by this concept,” said Emily Clough, a senior history major, as Mr. Groening began setting up three projectors to beam Twitter streams on the classroom’s walls.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/?p=40976

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Online learning in college courses gaining popularity in Kentucky

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:01 am

by Chris Kenning, The Courier-Journal

Mirroring a national trend, online courses are exploding in popularity across Kentucky, grabbing an expanding share of students’ college educations, according to a recent Council on Postsecondary Education report. Roughly one in three students now take at least one online course each year, the report found, and nearly one in 10 take all their courses online. In all, online credit hours in Kentucky jumped from 222,916 in 2005 to 792,081 in 2010, with community colleges accounting for much of that growth. Online courses now comprise 26 percent of all community and technical credit hours taken, up from 10 percent in 2005. But they’re also a growing presence at four-year universities. Since 2005, the share of Kentucky universities’ online credit hours has nearly tripled, to 17 percent last year.

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20121117/BETTERLIFE03/311190004/Online-college-courses-gaining-popularity-Kentucky

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November 21, 2012

Six Ways to Get Your Online Students Participating in the Course

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:10 am

By: Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti in Online Education, Faculty Focus

Have you ever worried about the level of participation in your online courses? Perhaps you have difficulty encouraging students to interact with one another, or maybe you find student responses to be perfunctory. Surely there must be a way to encourage the kinds of participation that really supports learning.

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/six-ways-to-get-your-online-students-participating-in-the-course/

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The top 10 free online learning courses

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:05 am

by Patrick Stafford, Smart Company

Entrepreneurs are always learning. Whether it’s through reading or watching a mentor work, learning how to do business better is a fundamental part of running a company. So it’s little wonder many courses in the latest trend of free education are aimed squarely at entrepreneurs. While some may still view free, online courses with a sense of derision, the truth is these resources are quality sources of knowledge. There are plenty online, but we’ve put some work into finding the 10 best, free online courses. Take your pick and learn something new.

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/information-technology/052915-the-top-10-free-online-courses-2.html

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Distance Learning Has Been Around Since 1892, You Big MOOC

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:01 am

by James Marshall Crotty, Forbes

As noted in my pieces on MITx, edX, Udacity and other Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platforms, online education is driving today’s higher education revolution. Though the flurry of attention around MOOCs may lead one to conclude that distance learning is a recent phenomenon, it actually dates back over 120 years. According to a team of Ph.D’s and NASA scientists assembled by Post University, distance learning began in 1892 when the University of Chicago created the first college-level distance learning program. Expanding from this initial use of the U.S. Postal Service for course correspondence, distance education moved towards live radio shows in 1921 and then televised broadcasts in 1963.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2012/11/14/distance-learning-has-been-around-since-1892-you-big-mooc/

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November 20, 2012

Online learning to shape future of education in India

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:11 am

by Suneera Tandon, Live Mint and the Wall Street Journal

Technology may be the magic cure India needs for the ills that plague its school education, executives from companies providing technology solutions for classrooms said in a discussion at the World Economic Forum’s India Economic Summit, 2012. Education has a role to play in efforts of a country looking to transforming itself from a middle-income economy to a high-income one said the discussion’s moderator, Gordon Brown, United Nations special envoy for global education and the former Prime Minister of the UK. There is “no other important issue other than education in this country or globally,” he added. And in India, said the executives, at least some significant education challenges can be met through technology.

http://www.livemint.com/Politics/36weqTdDufp9o2XCuiKfdO/Elearning-to-shape-future-of-education-in-India.html

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In Online Learning Exams, Big Brother Will Be Watching

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:06 am

by Brian Bergstein, Technology Review

The boom in online education has created a job that didn’t exist a few years ago: remote test proctor. More than 100 of them work for ProctorU, a fast-growing startup founded in 2009. Sitting at computers in ProctorU’s offices in Hoover, Alabama, or Livermore, California, the proctors use webcams and screen-sharing software to observe students anywhere as they take a test or complete an online assignment. As the students do the work on their computers, the proctors watch to make sure they don’t cheat.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/506346/in-online-exams-big-brother-will-be-watching/

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Gates grant to help Georgia Tech develop online learning courses

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:01 am

By Laura Diamond, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia Tech has been tapped to participate in a national effort to expand free student access to quality online college courses. The college received $150,000 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to create three introductory courses to be taught online. The classes — in physics, psychology and first-year composition — will be offered next fall and geared toward students who have yet to start college or earn a degree. The foundation awarded grants to nine colleges, including Duke University and Ohio State University, to develop these massive open online courses, also known as MOOCs. It was part of a series of 12 awards — worth more than $3 million — to invest in this growing market. “MOOCs are an exciting innovation,” Dan Greenstein, director of postsecondary success at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said in a statement. “They hold great promise but are not without challenges, and we are still discovering their full potential.”

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/gates-grant-to-help-georgia-tech-develop-online-co/nS7y6/

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November 19, 2012

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:10 am

by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

The Gates Foundation has made a number of strategic investments in a range of postsecondary areas, and these investments complement several existing work streams. Though Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have much to prove, the foundation is interested in their potential to make content and learning more accessible and affordable at web scale—at least for some students and some types of content. It has never been more important for Americans to have training and education after high school. Sadly, far too few people complete a degree or training program, leaving most of them unqualified for the best opportunities. We believe an education ecosystem with diverse options for faculty and students, and options that meet a wide array of learning needs and styles, will help increase student success rates. We are eager to learn from and share the data that will be generated from our investments in MOOCs in order to advance teaching and learning. In June 2012, the Gates Foundation made a grant to MIT to develop and offer a MOOC. MIT’s new, free prototype computer science online course, offered through edX, and in partnership with community colleges, will experiment with using the course in a “flipped” classroom.  On November 13th 2012, the foundation awarded 12 grants, totaling more than $3 million, in new investments in MOOCs.

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/postsecondaryeducation/pages/massive-open-online-courses.aspx

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Prominent Universities to Offer Online Learning Program

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:09 am

by HANNAH SELIGSON, NY Times

Starting next fall, 10 prominent universities, including Duke, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Northwestern, will form a consortium called Semester Online, offering about 30 online courses to both their students — for whom the classes will be covered by their regular tuition — and to students elsewhere who would have to apply and be accepted and pay tuition of more than $4,000 a course.“Now we can provide students with a course that mirrors our classroom experience,” says Edward S. Macias, provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs at Washington University in St. Louis, one of the participants. For many of the participating schools, which include Brandeis, Emory, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Rochester, Vanderbilt and Wake Forest, Semester Online offerings will be their first undergraduate for-credit online courses, and the first to offer credit to students from outside the universities.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/education/duke-northwestern-to-offer-semester-online-classes.html

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How To Pick Valuable Online Learning Classes

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:05 am

by Yolander Prinzel, San Francisco Chronicle

Not only has the Internet given the world more methods of information sharing and networking, it has also created an unfortunate, anonymous environment that allows anyone to claim guru status in his or her chosen field. This does not mean this person actually is a guru but rather he or she plays one on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the blogosphere. Separating a self-proclaimed guru from a trusted, experienced professional with valuable insight is difficult, but it’s a skill that must be learned. This is especially true if you plan to take an online class or workshop. Do you want to learn from someone who really has something valuable to offer or a person who just thinks he or she does?

http://www.sfgate.com/business/investopedia/article/How-To-Pick-Valuable-Online-Classes-4040809.php

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November 18, 2012

Welcome to Star Scholar U. Online Learning, where professors are the credential

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:10 am

by the Chronicle of Higher Ed

A new kind of university has begun to emerge: Call it Star Scholar U. Professors with large followings and technical prowess are breaking off to start their own online institutions, delivering courses with little or no backing from traditional campuses. Founding a university may sound dramatic, but in an era of easy-to-use online tools it can be done as a side project—akin to blogging or writing a textbook. Soon there could be hundreds of Star Scholar U’s.

http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/08/welcome-to-star-scholar-u-where-professors-are-the-credential/

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Online learning ‘to cater for whole world’

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:01 am

by TRACY NEAL, NZ Stuff

Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT) aims to be part of a growing e-learning movement which offers affordable education around the world, in an effort to be ahead of the game in a rapidly changing learning environment. NMIT is a founding partner of the Open Education Resources (OER) University, scheduled to be launched in November next year. OER is an international innovation partnership aiming to provide free learning opportunities for students worldwide. The foundation was launched in 2009 to help develop the OER university, described as a “virtual” collaboration of like-minded institutions committed to creating flexible pathways for OER learners to gain formal academic credit. NMIT has come on board to ensure it continues to source and deliver content to learners, chief executive Tony Gray said. The aim is to work in collaboration with a range of overseas and New Zealand organisations to increase its range of learning opportunities.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/news/7817228/E-learning-to-cater-for-whole-world

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How Online Courses Can Form a Basis for On-Campus Teaching

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:01 am

by Daphne Koller, Forbes

Last week, Antioch University announced its intention to allow students to take credit-bearing classes based on some of the courses offered on Coursera. Until now, online courses have been used primarily in one of two ways: as MOOCs (non-credit-bearing classes open to anyone), and within the academic institutions producing these classes, to support a “flipped classroom” model for their own registered students. The Antioch model reflects a third paradigm, in which one institution uses courses produced by another as the basis for a credit-bearing class. In this model, the online content is generally “ wrapped” with some face-to-face class time by a local instructor, who can facilitate discussion, answer questions, ensure that students are making progress, and possibly augment the course with additional content and/or assessments.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/coursera/2012/11/07/how-online-courses-can-form-a-basis-for-on-campus-teaching/

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November 17, 2012

Asia’s online learning market ‘the strongest in the world’

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:05 am

by Virtual College (UK)

Asia has the highest growth rate worldwide for online learning and revenues are predicted to top $11.5 billion (£7.2 billion) by 2016. This is according to a new report from market research specialist Ambient Insight, which analysed the circumstances of sixteen nations in its survey The Asia Market for Self-paced eLearning Products and Services. It found the growth rate for digital education on the continent – focussing on countries such as India, China, Japan, Malaysia and South Korean – is currently at 17.3 per cent.

http://www.virtual-college.co.uk/news/Asias-elearning-market-the-strongest-in-the-world-newsitems-801483021.aspx

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Students ‘flocking to online learning’

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:03 am

by Virtual College (UK)

A university has revealed that there has been a significant upturn in the number of students taking up e-learning courses. Melbourne University in Australia has announced the number of enrolments on its online courses is now higher than the amount of people signing up to campus-based education, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. It noted there are in excess of 52,000 subscribers to the institution’s web courses, which are due to get underway next year, compared to the 47,561 individuals that MyUniversity quotes as studying in more traditional methods. Such figures emphasise the significant swing there has been towards e-learning in recent times. The macro-economics online tutorial is the most popular offering, with more than 12,000 signed up to complete this. There are plenty of other subjects available, including animal behaviour, climate change and exercise physiology.

http://www.virtual-college.co.uk/news/Students-flocking-to-elearning-newsitems-801482438.aspx

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Weighing the merits of an online learning MBA

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:02 am

By Anne Fisher, Forbes

Long-distance programs are usually made up of exactly the same course content as campus-based MBAs, Ewen notes, and they answer a real need. “So many executives now maintain rigorous travel schedules, with some on the road up to five days a week” that traditional classroom learning just isn’t practical, she says. “So universities have responded accordingly, with prestigious institutions like Duke, Johns Hopkins, MIT, and the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School offering their programs online for on-the-go professionals.”

http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/11/09/weighing-the-merits-of-an-online-mba/

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