Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eCampus News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

Interest in hybrid courses on the rise

Hybrid courses combine the benefits of online and face-to-face instruction.
Hybrid courses combine the benefits of online and face-to-face instruction.

Several colleges and universities say they’ve seen double-digit increases in the number of students taking online courses in recent years. Increasingly, some of the online offerings are what’s known as “hybrid” courses, which mix an online experience with traditional classroom learning.

Scott Pilgram is working on his business management degree from Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minn. Last semester, Pilgram took his first hybrid course.

The class, Linguistics in Society, alternated between classroom work one week and online work the next.…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