Online courses, still lacking that third dimension

When colleges and universities finally decide to make full use of the internet, most professors will lose their jobs, says Randall Stross for Digital Domain. That includes me. I’m not worried, though, at least for the moment. Amid acute budget crises, state universities like mine can’t afford to take that very big step–adopting the technology that renders human instructors obsolete. I began teaching classes online 10 years ago, but the term “online” is misleading. What I really mean is that I teach a hybrid course: part software, part hovering human. A genuine online course would be nothing but the software and would handle all the grading, too. No living, breathing instructor would be needed for oversight.

“We should focus on having at least one great course online for each subject rather than lots of mediocre courses,” Bill Gates suggested in his 2010 annual letter for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation…

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Report predicts online learning explosion by 2015

More students are taking exclusively online college courses.

The number of college students taking online college courses will equal the number of students who attend classes in a traditional classroom by 2015, according to a market research firm whose research contradicts another recent study suggesting a possible leveling off in online learning.

The research firm, Ambient Insight, released a report this month that focuses on the varying demand for educational technology tools in K-12 schools and universities. The report also details growth trends that suggest the recent spike in online college courses likely wasn’t a passing phase.

In four years, the report said, there will be more than 25 million postsecondary students taking at least one online course. But the more jarring statistic might be Ambient Insight’s projections for traditional courses.…Read More

How to find a quality online degree

While online degrees were once largely seen as being second-rate, recent studies have reported that employers are not only more open to, but are even showing a favorable sentiment toward candidates with online degrees these days, reports AOL Jobs. One such study, conducted by Excelsior College/Zogby International, found that 61 percent of CEOs and small-business owners were familiar with online degree programs–and 83 percent of those considered online degrees equivalent to those earned in a traditional classroom…

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How online classrooms are helping Haiti rebuild its education system

When University of the People founder Shai Reshef welcomed 16 Haitian students to their first day of class last Thursday, he told them that life might prevent some of them–as it does students in every part of the world–from completing their degrees at the free, online university.

“They looked at me and said, you just don’t understand,” Reshef says. “We cannot drop out. We have to finish it. That’s our lives. It’s like dying if we don’t graduate.”

Haitians have good reason for thinking of education a bit differently than much of the rest of the world. In a country where just over fifty percent of the population meets the CIA World Factbook’s definition of 87% of the country’s institutions of higher learning, it became even more precious. While reconstructing the destroyed universities is a long-term task, University of the People is hoping to give Haitian students a way to continue their educations before it’s completed, reports Mashable. By opening a center where students can take advantage of the scarce electricity, computers, and Internet connection required to enroll in the University of the People’s free online courses, the organization hopes to not only ease Haiti’s current woes, but also help build its future……Read More

Online learning official: Video lectures help students ‘review, review, review’

Moloney said more UMass Lowell classrooms will have lecture capture systems soon.
Moloney said more UMass Lowell classrooms will have lecture capture systems soon.

Jacqueline Moloney wants college students to do less transcribing and more listening.

Moloney, executive vice chancellor and head of online learning at the University of Massachusetts Lowell campus, has overseen an effort to make lecture capture technology a standard feature in the university’s classrooms, along with a host of other technologies that can be tailored to fit instructors’ preferences.

Along with a suite of other technologies—digital document cameras and interactive LCD touch screens among them—about one-third of UMass Lowell’s classrooms have been equipped with lecture capture programs that, Moloney said, let students “review, review, review” by rewinding the video lectures and hashing over complex concepts.…Read More

Study: Online learning less effective for some

Classroom students scored an average of 84.5 percent on the first exam in the microeconomics course, and online students scored 83.3 percent.
Classroom students scored 84.5 percent on the first exam in the economics course, and online students scored 83.3 percent.

Higher education’s embrace of online courses could hurt the performance of some groups of students, according to a study that contradicts the findings of a 2009 report from the U.S. Department of Education (ED) showing that online students perform as well, or better, than their peers in face-to-face settings on average.

Research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) suggests that males, Hispanics, and low-performing students might fare worse in web-based classes than they do in the traditional classroom—a problem exacerbated by the high rate of online course adoption at community colleges and “less selective institutions,” where these three groups are most likely to attend.

The rush to make online courses widely available and save colleges money in difficult economic times might be “inadvertently … harming a significant portion of their student body,” according to the study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation and ED.…Read More

Ed-tech grant program aims to boost college readiness

The Educause-backed program will fund ed-tech projects designed to make high school graduates college ready.
The Educause-backed program will fund ed-tech projects designed to make high school graduates college ready.

Six months after the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pumped $3.6 million into a national certification program for teachers of remedial college courses, a new initiative will dole out grants to education-technology projects aimed at improving college readiness, especially among low-income students.

The Next Gen Learning Challenges program, launched in late June and headed by nonprofit education technology supporter Educause, will aim to raise America’s high school graduation rate – which hovers around 50 percent among Hispanic, African American, and low-income students – and ensure that college freshmen are ready for higher education without having to take non-credit-bearing remedial classes.

Only half of Americans who enroll in a postsecondary school will earn a degree, according to national statistics, with as few as 25 percent of low-income students completing a degree program.…Read More

Event calls for university transformation

Online learning is increasingly becoming more mainstream, contributing to a reinvisioning of American higher education.
Online learning is increasingly becoming more mainstream, contributing to a re-envisioning of American higher education.

While online learning is often seen as a way for adult learners to prepare for a change of career or advance skills in their current field, it is increasingly becoming the learning method of choice for younger, more traditional students as well, education experts said during a recent forum—and colleges and universities would be wise to prepare for this shift.

In the fall of 2008, 1.8 million students were enrolled in fully-online degree programs, compared with only a few thousand in 1995, said Peter Stokes, executive vice president and chief research officer for Eduventures, a higher-education research and consulting firm. It’s estimated that 4.6 million students were enrolled in at least one online course in the fall of 2008, he said.

Of the 15 institutions with the largest numbers of fully-online students, 11 are for-profit institutions.…Read More

Online textbooks let students share notes across the globe

One-third of students surveyed said they were "comfortable" with eBooks.
One-third of students surveyed said they were "comfortable" with eBooks.

Florida State College at Jacksonville faculty have created 20 electronic textbooks that are accessible on a free online platform that lets students take notes in the margins, search for key terms, and share notes with peers and professors through an interactive social-networking feature.

Students don’t need to buy any additional hardware to use the college’s eBook program, officials said. Instead, they simply download an eReader application called CafeScribe, which also brings students together through social networking to form online study groups.

And students who use the CafeScribe eBooks aren’t limited to contact with their professors and fellow students. Any student from any campus in the world can share content and study notes with any other student if they’re using the same web-based textbook, according to an April 21 announcement from Follett Higher Education Group, the Illinois-based used book supplier that makes CafeScribe.…Read More

Virtual Symposium examines worldwide growth of online access

The Virtual Symposium focused partly on keeping open source technologies free.
The Virtual Symposium focused partly on keeping open-source technologies free.

Online learning, open courseware, eBooks, wikis, and many other innovative technologies have forever affected education by connecting any topic in any discipline to any learner in any place. Even individuals in remote communities now can access unlimited information free of charge, if they have an internet connection. This also provides more possibilities for international collaboration, knowledge building, and sharing of best practices.

Drexel University’s School of Education capitalized on these possibilities during its second annual live and online Virtual Symposium, in conjunction with Wainhouse Research and the World Bank Institute’s Global Development Learning Network (GDLN). This year’s Virtual Symposium built upon the theme Education for Everyone: Expanding Access Through Technology.

The symposium highlighted education technology innovations, and it examined challenges to access—for example, among poor and rural communities—and possibilities for overcoming them. A major feature of the symposium was the ability for participants to share experiences among peers in both developing and developed countries.…Read More

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