Exam lets prospects ‘test drive’ online education

Nearly seven in 10 students pass Test Drive College Online's competency exam.
Nearly seven in 10 students pass Test Drive College Online's competency exam.

Prospective students returning to college after a lengthy layoff can gauge their basic English and math skills beforehand to make sure they’re ready for online classes with a new program designed to find the most qualified and disciplined students for web-based courses.

Test Drive College Online, launched May 5 at no charge, matches applicants with online institutions that best suit their academic goals after the student passes a 20-question College Competency Exam, which includes freshman-level math and English questions that help advisors identify students who aren’t yet ready for higher education.

Once students pass the competency test, they can enroll in a five-week course designed as a test run, letting them understand the demands of web-based classes before they pay tuition and find they can’t handle the workload. If the student completes the course, an advisor helps the student transfer the credits earned during the five-week class and enroll in any one of 200 online programs.…Read More

Online education expert: Discipline is key

Peery says indentifying confused students is sometimes difficult for online instructors.
Peery says identifying confused students is sometimes difficult for online instructors.

Irresistible prime-time television and quick snacks that turn into 20-minute breaks are the ever-tempting enemies of online learning, according to Maryland’s distance educator of the year, who says proactive and dedicated students get the most out of web-based classes and the freedom they provide.

Tammy Peery, chair of the English Department at Montgomery College’s Germantown campus, was recognized as her state’s top online instructor March 4 by the Maryland Distance Learning Association.

Peery, a teacher at the three-campus, 60,000-student community college since 1999, grabbed the association’s attention with her role in developing Montgomery Common Courses, online classes that feature the same content for all students in different sections of a college course.…Read More

Online college for union members in the works

Education experts say more web-based colleges are needed to meet growing demand.
Education experts say more web-based colleges are needed to meet growing demand.

The National Labor College will make about 20 online courses available for the AFL-CIO’s 11.5 million members next fall in an effort to help workers adapt to a job market that increasingly requires higher education.

The online school, tentatively named the College for Working Families, will be built with resources from the Princeton Review, a national educational support services provider, said William Scheuerman, president of the Silver Spring, Md.-based National Labor College.

The Labor College and the AFL-CIO will distribute a questionnaire in the coming weeks that will gauge members’ interest in which classes will be available in the fall.…Read More

Has Google developed the next wave of online education?

Google Wave marks the next step in collaboration capabilities for group projects, some in education say.
Google Wave marks the next step in collaboration capabilities for group projects, some in education say.

Combining text, audio, and video chat with features like drag-and-drop documents and interactive polls, Google Wave is a free web program that could add unprecedented depth to student interaction, many educators say.

Programmers who designed Google Wave, a tool still in development and only available through limited invites, started with a question: What would eMail look like if it were invented today?

The answer is a format that merges social networking with multimedia in an online meeting space where students and instructors can see each other type in real time, conduct private conversations, and edit documents simultaneously.…Read More

Opinion: Virtual schools are a critical piece of education’s future

Classroom and lecture hall disruption can be important for students on every level of education.
Classroom and lecture hall disruption can be important for students on every level of education, writes Michael Simonson.

Technological innovations might be categorized along a continuum from sustaining to disruptive. In education, a sustaining technology might be a SMART Board, which in most applications is a way to present information dynamically and efficiently—a sustaining upgrade to the chalkboard and overhead projector—while a disruptive technology would be a virtual school.

As a matter of fact, most attempts to integrate instructional technology into the traditional classroom are examples of sustaining technologies: data projectors, DVD players, eBooks—all which improve the performance of established products.

Most integrated technologies sustain, and do not disrupt.…Read More

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