Online courses to go offline

2u’s Semester Online consortium will soon disband

2U-online-classesThis summer 2U’s for-credit online course platform Semester Online will offer two dozen new courses on subjects ranging from forensics to Shakespeare. They will also be the program’s last.

After years of high-profile partnership announcements, stumbles, and false starts, 2U will discontinue its online learning consortium before the new school year begins.

The program allows universities to pool together resources to offer for-credit online courses. While the courses’ video lecture format is often compared to massive open online courses, Semester Online courses are quite different from MOOCs. The courses aren’t open to just anybody, and they’re hardly massive, with many courses being capped at 20 students.…Read More

Can you flip an online class?

The flipped class model can help us design more interactive online learning experiences

flip-online-classWe recently asked a group of teaching assistants, “How do you think today’s college class is different than when you were an undergraduate student? What is the most significant change you’ve noticed?”

The number one answer? Technology. This is not a surprise. What’s most interesting is that many of these graduate students were undergraduates just a few years ago, yet they still see technology as the most significant change in the college class. Why?

Shouldn’t our students be used to it by now? Shouldn’t we? Either technology is changing so rapidly that we always see it as “new,” or we’re still struggling to integrate technology effectively and seamlessly into the learning experience.…Read More

This backlash trend is gaining momentum

Students say they’re not ready for an all eTextbook offering

textbook-online-collegesIn a trend occurring in multiple colleges across the country, students are saying ‘no’ to eBooks, due poor ease-of-use, limited funds for eReaders, and lack of available resources.

The most recent example occurred at Alamo Colleges, where students say they have gathered more than 1,000 petition signatures in an attempt to stop the community college district from implementing a recently approved instructional material approach that has also drawn opposition from faculty members.

Northwest Vista College freshman Alexis Morrow, 17, who is leading the petition drive, said many students prefer traditional textbooks, don’t have the resources to buy eReaders and don’t want to see their options to rent or purchase textbooks limited. She presented the petition to Alamo Colleges trustees at their board meeting March 25th.…Read More

The business of ed-tech: Textbook shopping made easy

Site allows students to save hundreds of dollars in an efficient way

textbooks-online-shoppingDavid Miller knows that when a college student pays $30 for a textbook they had seen available for $200, they’ll never go back.

That’s the story of cash-saving deal students find regularly once they’ve scoured the web for the cheapest versions of books required for their various classes. It’s Miller’s site, SlugBooks.com, that brings efficiency to the process.

SlugBooks, launched in 2008 at the University of California (UC) Santa Cruz–where Miller attended college–has helped even the textbook playing field in recent years. A quick SlugBooks search will show a student where they can get the best price, even if it’s at their campus bookstore.…Read More

5 must-haves for online assessments

‘Good’ online assessments could bring much-needed credibility to MOOCs

online-assessments-MOOCAs K-12 schools and higher education institutions across the country begin to implement online learning, issues of low retention rates and lack of credibility are some of the main reasons why skeptics hesitate in supporting online learning—specifically MOOCs.

The answer to increasing retention rates, as well as giving more credibility to many less traditional forms of online learning, is in good assessments, say supporters.

“Assessments are the lynchpins of MOOCs,” said David Smetters, CEO of Respondus, a Windows exam creation tool. “If you go to a college campus and sit in the back of a lecture hall, it’s certainly possible to learn things. But when you actually register for the course and take the assessments designed for it, you can demonstrate mastery of the content. An instructor then feels comfortable providing a grade, and likewise the institution is comfortable granting a certificate, a degree or some type of badge.”…Read More

The shocking politics of online learning

Parties both support online learning, just different forms, and for different reasons

ecnaprilstory200A Republican governor and a Democratic governor in 1996 teamed up to convince the leaders of 17 states to create the all-online, competency-based Western Governors University. It was as bipartisan a venture as one could hope to find in politics.

“It was the liberal governor of Colorado, Roy Romer, and the conservative governor of Utah, Michael Levitt, who joined forces to create this new university,” said Russ Poulin, deputy director of research and analysis for WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies. “It grew out of a joint frustration of the existing public systems in their states to meet the needs of their growing populaces and to be innovative.”

At the time, few outside of those states paid much attention to the young university and the bipartisan effort that produced it. Nearly 20 years later,WGU is now a fully accredited institution with 40,000 students – and online education as a whole is receiving more political attention than ever before.…Read More

How to make an online lab successful

Excelsior’s Online Writing Lab is successful because it links pedagogy with multimedia that engages, not just entertains

Excelsior-College-online-writing-labEarlier this month, Excelsior College launched a highly interactive, media-rich Online Writing Lab (OWL) and opened it up for free to the public.

If the more than 20 college campuses already incorporating the OWL haven’t proven its effectiveness, the Evaluation Consortium at the University of Albany has; its nationwide pilot study found the OWL boosted final student grades by 5 points.

The secret to the OWL’s success lies in its ability to bridge pedagogy with multimedia that engages, not just entertains.…Read More

7 features of a next-gen online learning platform

Customized online learning platform removes many differences between face-to-face and online learning

platform-online-learningAs massive online learning platforms like Coursera and edX move past their infant years, one university is taking the next step by partnering with innovative companies to produce a custom-built platform, incorporating next-generation features poised to eradicate many of the differences between face-to-face and online learning.

One of the main critiques of online learning, and MOOCs specifically, is that the courses aren’t equal to face-to-face learning due to a lack of personal interaction and low retention rates.

Yet, the University of Oklahoma (OU), after partnering with social learning technology experts, NextThought, have developed what could be considered the next-generation online learning platform: A platform that delivers social interaction technology, direct lines to professors, customized courses, new video technology for MOOCs, and much more.…Read More

INFOGRAPHIC: Distance education by the numbers

New facts discovered about distance education reveals that our perception may be exaggerated

ditance-learning-onlineAccording to a new analysis of the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), the current national conception that distance education is “booming,” is an exaggeration, since only a low percentage of postsecondary students are enrolled in a distance education course.

The analysis, conducted by the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET), which brings higher-ed stakeholders and institutions to “improve the quality and reach” of eLearning programs, and based on the same methodology of Phil Hill of the e-Literate blog, is based off of IPEDS’ first time inclusion of data on students taking distance education courses in Fall 2012.

“With this data, we can finally get a comprehensive, objective look at the current state of distance education adoption nationally,” said Terri Straut of Ascension Consulting, who provided the analysis for WCET.…Read More

Has the number of online programs been exaggerated?

Major discrepancy may exist because of the ‘overly ambiguous and broad’ definition of “online”

online-programs-learningColleges and universities may be drastically over-reporting the number of online programs at their institutions, a new report concluded.

The report, released by ApprovedColleges.com, said that the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) lists far more programs than what actually exists. While IPEDS, which relies on self-reported surveys, lists 3,311 schools offering online programs, ApprovedColleges only found 1,243.

So, if true, why the discrepancy?…Read More

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