Online Learning Update

Statewide Support for K 12 Online Learning Grows - David Nagel, THE Journal

2009-11-22T00:10:00.000Z

States and districts have increased their support for online K-12 education programs. Twenty-five states now run statewide online initiatives, according to new research from the Center for Digital Education (CDE) at policy and research firm e.Republic. That's up from 15 states running such initiatives a year ago. The research, conducted in consultation with iNACOL (the International Association for K-12 Online Learning) and underwritten by LMS provider Blackboard, was conducted through interviews with state department of education representatives. It found that in addition to the 25 states with government-run programs, two states also have statewide online initiatives in place that are not run by the states themselves, and four additional states have plans to implement online learning programs.

Strengthening our relationship with China - Harold McGraw III, Star-Ledger

2009-11-22T00:05:00.002Z

In every sector of our economy, we should welcome fresh opportunities for partnership. For example, during my trip to China this week, we launched new partnerships with Chinese companies in professional development and online learning. Over the years, the relationship between the United States and China has come a long way. Through all the changes, it has emerged stronger than before. While an ocean still separates our two countries, a bridge of shared economic interests now runs between. And now is the time to strengthen that bridge.

Professors and students differ in opinion on technology in class - Zac Halpern, Boston College Heights

2009-11-22T00:01:00.001Z

A study completed this year by the U.S. Department of Education concluded that the use of technology in the classroom enhances learning. "This new report reinforces that effective teachers need to incorporate digital content into everyday classes and consider open-source learning management systems, which have proven cost-effective in school districts and colleges nationwide," said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. The study analyzed 46 studies of online learning spanning from 1996 to July 2008. Duncan is using the study to encourage the use of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds "to bring broadband access and online learning to more communities."

The Technological Dimension of a Massive Open Online Learning Course: The Case of the CCK08 Course Tools - Antonio Fini, IRRODL

2009-11-21T00:10:00.001Z

In 2008, a new term emerged in the already crowded e-learning landscape: MOOC, or massive open online course. Lifelong learners can now use various tools to build and manage their own learning networks, and MOOCs may provide opportunities to test such networks. This paper focuses on the technological aspects of one MOOC, the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (CCK08) course, in order to investigate lifelong learners� attitudes towards learning network technologies. The research framework is represented by three perspectives: (a) lifelong learning in relation to open education, with a focus on the effective use of learning tools; (b) the more recent personal knowledge management (PKM) skills approach; and (c) the usability of web-based learning tools. Findings from a survey of CCK08 participants show that the course attracted adult, informal learners, who were not concerned about course completion. Time constraints, language barriers, and ICT skills affected the participants� choice of tools; for example, learners favoured the passive, time-saving mailing list over interactive, time-consuming discussions forums and blogs. Some recommendations for future MOOCs include highlighting the purpose of the tools (e.g., skill-building) and stating clearly that the learners can choose their preferred tools. Further research on sustainability and facilitator workload should be conducted to determine the cost and effectiveness of MOOCs. Investigation is also necessary to understand MOOC participant profiles as they relate to course outcomes and retention and whether terms such as course and attrition are appropriate in this context..

The Impact of Openness on Bridging Educational Digital Divides - Andy Lane, IRRODL

2009-11-21T00:04:00.001Z

Openness has been a feature of higher education for many decades, particularly through the establishment of open universities, although there remain debates about what openness means in practice. Digital technologies, some based on open principles, and digital content, aided by open licences, have both contributed recently to an extension of what is deemed possible under the heading of openness. Nevertheless, while in principle there may be greater degrees of openness available in higher education it does not mean in practice that many people can still readily avail themselves of these new opportunities to learn, not just because they do not have access to digital technologies but personal circumstances mean they also lack the necessary skills and the confidence to use such technologies in general or for education in particular. In fact it can be argued that this new openness, characterised mainly through the open educational resources movement, may actually widen rather than bridge the digital and educational divides between groups, both within and across national boundaries, through the increasing sophistication in technologies and the competencies expected of learners. This paper reviews some of the evidence supporting these different areas of interest and attempts to provide a synthesis of them. It then argues that actions may be required by many inter-mediaries to help to reduce the diverse social and cultural digital divides within education, including through the mediated use of open educational resources between teachers and learners.

Increasing Access and Enabling Global Participation in Higher Education - Tannis Morgan & Stephen Carey, IRRODL

2009-11-21T00:01:00.001Z

Two of the major challenges to international students� right of access to higher education are geographical/economic isolation and academic literacy in English (Carey, 1999; Hamel, 2007). The authors propose that adopting open course models in traditional universities, through blended or online delivery, can offer benefits to the institutions and to the open education movement itself, in particular with non-Anglophone students. This paper describes the model and an implementation with undergraduate students in Canada, Mexico, and Russia.
The implementation of the model was examined in three studies, which relied on data collected from student interviews, instructor observations and reflections, instructor interviews, course documents, and discussion forum transcripts. The authors note that the main benefit of an open course model is the development of academic literacy for students of English as an Other Language (EOL). Other benefits include 1) international course transfers, 2) breadth of professorial exposure for the students, 3) flexibility in professors� employment and professional development, and 4) course credits for students. Some of the challenges include 1) varying levels of Internet access, 2) coordination of the participation of the instructors, and 3) different teaching and learning practices.

Online enrollment soars at PSU�s World Campus - Anne Danahy, Centre Daily

2009-11-20T00:10:00.000Z

When Al Turgeon taught Penn State�s first completely online class in January 1998, the turfgrass man-a professor had about 17 students. Six weeks later, that number had doubled. Today almost 10,000 students from around the country and world are taking classes from what Penn State calls its World Campus. The number of course enrollments increased 37 percent over last year. That reflects a national trend of rising enrollment in online programs even as growth in old-fashioned classroom enrollment is sluggish.

Online Learning: Second Life allows Escambia County educators to meet in an online-only world - Rebekah Allen, Pensacola News Journal

2009-11-20T00:05:00.001Z

Escambia County School District recently purchased a significant piece of land which will be used primarily for professional development for teachers. The acquisition, which holds several facilities for teacher resources, also houses a tree house conference area and a state-of-the-art, glass-dome room, located in the bay, where teachers can exchange ideas while taking in the marine life.Oh, and you can fly while on the land.Because it's in Second Life, a computer simulator and Internet sensation where people use avatars, or virtual personas, to live out an online-only life.

Click �n' learn: GCCC adds more online learning - CHRIS SEGAL, News Herald Writer

2009-11-20T00:01:00.001Z

Gulf Coast Community College administrators are adding online course offerings, which now include six associate degrees that can be completely solely online. The degrees include general studies (liberal arts) A.A. degree and A.A. transfer tracks in elementary teacher education, history, psychology, social studies education and special education. Many courses have been offered but they are now being packaged as complete degree programs, said Steve Dunnivant, associate dean of E-learning.

Learning Online:The Class of 2013 Spends 1/5 of Day on Computer! - CNN Money

2009-11-19T00:10:00.000Z

For the first time, the study delved into exactly how much time multi-tasking students were engaging with their preferred media on a daily basis, for any purpose. When all platforms were totaled, the study found that students are spending a whopping 12 hours daily, on average, engaged with some type of media. The majority of that time -- 9.5 hours -- is spent with their "tech" gadgets, including computers, mobile devices, MP3 players, and gaming devices. Markedly, students are now spending twice as much time on their computers as compared to television viewing. Students reported watching 2.5 hours of television daily, nearly equal to time spent on their cell phones or PDA's, while one-fifth of their day is spent on the computer.

Google backtracks on putting world�s books online - Dominic Rushe, Times Online

2009-11-19T00:05:00.001Z

Google has slashed in half its controversial plans to become the world�s biggest online library in a legal move to appease critics, including China, the US Justice Department, authors and publishers. In an American legal filing made close to midnight on Friday, Google and its publishing allies set out their latest proposal for a plan that will allow Google to distribute millions of books online.
The agreement is designed to settle a 2005 class action lawsuit accusing the search engine of copyright infringement after it started scanning vast libraries of books.

Online Learning for Dollars: Selling Lessons Online Raises Cash and Questions - Winnie Hu, New York Times

2009-11-19T00:01:00.001Z

Between Craigslist and eBay, the Internet is well established as a marketplace where one person�s trash is transformed into another�s treasure. Now, thousands of teachers are cashing in on a commodity they used to give away, selling lesson plans online for exercises as simple as M&M sorting and as sophisticated as Shakespeare. While some of this extra money is going to buy books and classroom supplies in a time of tight budgets, the new teacher-entrepreneurs are also spending it on dinners out, mortgage payments, credit card bills, vacation travel and even home renovation, leading some school officials to raise questions over who owns material developed for public school classrooms.

Peer-To-Peer Recognition of Online Learning in Open Education - Jan Philipp Schmidt, et al; IRRODL

2009-11-18T00:10:00.001Z

Recognition in education is the acknowledgment of learning achievements. Accreditation is certification of such recognition by an institution, an organization, a government, a community, etc. There are a number of assessment methods by which learning can be evaluated (exam, practicum, etc.) for the purpose of recognition and accreditation, and there are a number of different purposes for the accreditation itself (i.e., job, social recognition, membership in a group, etc). As our world moves from an industrial to a knowledge society, new skills are needed. Social web technologies offer opportunities for learning, which build these skills and allow new ways to assess them. This paper makes the case for a peer-based method of assessment and recognition as a feasible option for accreditation purposes. The peer-based method would leverage online communities and tools, for example digital portfolios, digital trails, and aggregations of individual opinions and ratings into a reliable assessment of quality. Recognition by peers can have a similar function as formal accreditation, and pathways to turn peer recognition into formal credits are outlined. The authors conclude by presenting an open education assessment and accreditation scenario, which draws upon the attributes of open source software communities: trust, relevance, scalability, and transparency.

Open Textbook Proof-of-Concept via Connexions - Judy Baker, et al; IRRODL

2009-11-18T00:05:00.001Z

To address the high cost of textbooks, Rice University�s Connexions and the Community College Open Textbook Project (CCOTP) collaborated to develop a proof-of-concept free and open textbook. The proof-of-concept served to document a workflow process that would support adoption of open textbooks. Open textbooks provide faculty and students with a low cost alternative to traditional publishers� textbooks and can help to make higher education more affordable. Connexions provides a publishing platform for open textbook projects. The CCOTP acted as a liaison between community college faculty, open textbook authors, and Connexions. Challenges to the production and adoption of open textbooks include 1) faculty members� and students� expectations of high production quality and ancillaries for open textbooks, 2) methods for documenting and maintaining control over various versions, and 3) the process of converting existing open content to digital and accessible formats. Connexions holds promise as a means to overcome these challenges.

Educator Use of Social Networking Lags Behind Interest - Scott Aronowitz, THE Journal

2009-11-18T00:01:00.001Z

The final results of an extensive nationwide survey on educator use of social networking were published last week, and it appears that more than six educators in ten are at least interested enough in the growing medium to register on one or more sites. What this will mean in the long run for the impact of social networking on education, however, is far less clear. The survey, sponsored by educational networking site edWeb.net, mailing list and database firm MCH, and education marketing research firm MMS Education, was sent to 83,000 educators throughout the United States in August and September, including teachers, school librarians, and administrators.

South Alabama looks to expand online learning offerings - Renee Busby, AI.com

2009-11-17T00:10:00.001Z

Next fall, more students at the University of South Alabama might be watching their professors while sitting in their dorm rooms. The university wants to expand a "hybrid delivery system" through which students could listen to lectures online while also having a schedule of regular classes. The interest in the new approach comes as Internet instruction enjoys rapid growth at U.S. campuses. Online enrollments in higher education rose 12.9 percent last year, according to a survey of 2,500 colleges and universities by the Sloan Consortium, a group dedicated to high-quality online learning.

Instructor and class evaluations go online - Ani Arakelian, Salt Lake Community College Globe

2009-11-17T00:05:00.001Z

Students at Salt Lake Community College will soon see a change in how they evaluate the instructors. The system of using hard copies of evaluations is on its way out. Soon student will be able evaluate their instructors online. The hard copy evaluations took months to get results, and were costly to the college, according to Ray Emett, the Director of Institutional Research. The online evaluations will also give the college quicker results. This means they can be used efficiently to help in the hiring of instructors.

Online Learning booming in Jammu and Kashmir - India EDU News

2009-11-17T00:01:00.001Z

In today's competitive world, people often find themselves unsatisfied with their jobs and desirous of a handsome income and updated industry skills, they find themselves helplessly occupied by their daily chores. Now, the good news for those living in Jammu and Kashmir is that you can gain a higher education degree, learn new skills, and become more marketable by using the online learning opportunities available on the internet. One great thing about online education is that you can study according to your own schedule and can do it from the comfort of your own home.

More High School Students Learning Online - Mankato Fox 12

2009-11-16T00:10:00.001Z

Online learning is on the rise for those heading back to college, but also for high schoolers. BlueSky charter School offers online learning for kids in grades 7-12. Area residents were given a chance to learn about the program at South Central College last night. Bluesky allows students to access classes and assignments at anytime during the day to fit their schedules. Director Jeffrey Schulz says online learning is a new trend that meets student's needs. Jeffrey Shultz says, "It affords a great deal of flexibility, it affords another option for students for whom traditional settings for one reason or another don't see to meet their needs."

UT regents briefed on distance, online learning - Ralph K.M. Haurwitz, Statesman.com

2009-11-16T00:05:00.002Z

The University of Texas System Board of Regents is meeting today and tomorrow in Austin. Along with the usual personnel appointments, budget items and so forth, the regents carved out some time, as they often do, for a briefing on an issue in higher education. The issue du jour: distance and online learning. Distance learning, simply put, is education that takes place when the instructor is in one location and the student in another. For instance, students in a remote location might gather in a classroom to observe a professor�s lecture via closed-circuit TV, while other students observe the professor in the flesh. Online learning is just that: learning that takes place via computer.

Online Learning: NSSE changes how colleges judge success, weakness - Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY

2009-11-16T00:01:00.001Z

Online courses at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., have generated such rich student conversations that some faculty have started using electronic discussion boards in on-campus classes, too.And after officials at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, N.J., discovered that students who don't interact much with other students outside of class are also among those least satisfied with their experience, and therefore may be more likely to drop out, they made an extra effort this fall to reach out to freshmen who had seemed a bit shy during summer orientation. Those students got an extra phone call inviting them to a campus-sponsored party.

Shaping the Promise of Cloud Computing for Higher Education - Brad Wheeler and Shelton Waggener, EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 44, no. 6 (November/December 20

2009-11-15T00:10:00.002Z

Could the broad adoption of cloud computing be a critical multi-institution step toward Vest's meta-university? Vest noted: "The meta-university will enable, not replace, residential campuses, especially in wealthier regions. It will bring cost-efficiencies to institutions through the shared development of educational materials. It will be adaptive, not prescriptive."5 Although Vest's primary focus was on open-course materials, platforms for standards-based IT services are clearly an essential element of his vision. In many ways, this idea of sharing by the institution is simply catching up to the activity already evident in many scholarly disciplines and among students. Collaboration among researchers, students, degree programs, and even administrative services is both an economic necessity and a driver for real innovation. Collaboration is the new normal.

Online Learning Technologies: National Survey of Student Engagement 2009 Report

2009-11-15T00:05:00.002Z

Course management and interactive technologies were positively related to student engagement, self-reported learning outcomes, and deep approaches to learning. Course management technology was most strongly related to student-faculty interaction and self-reported gains in personal and social development. It is possible that the use of this type of organizational technology encourages contact among classmates as well as between students and their instructors. Interactive technologies corresponded most strongly with students� self-reported gains and the supportive campus environment benchmark. Students who use interactive technologies are also more likely to say their campus environment is supportive and contributes to their knowledge, skills, and personal development.

Seven Things You Should Know about Google Wave - EDUCAUSE (with thanks to Seb Schmoller)

2009-11-15T00:01:00.002Z

Google is developing an application that has elements of existing communication tools but is built around a different model of how communication�and collaboration�take place. With Wave, users create online spaces called "waves," which may include multiple discrete messages and components�"blips"�that constitute a running, conversational document. Users access waves through the web, resulting in a model of communication in which separate copies of multiple messages are not sent to different people; instead, the content resides in a single space. People go to a wave to access the content, respond to it, change it, replay it, send it to a blog, or add new material or attachments.

Internet changes course of learning: More K-12 students drawn to flexibility, options of online learning - Jody Lawrence-Turner, the Spokesman

2009-11-14T00:10:00.001Z

Online education is quickly becoming a popular option for K-12 students nationwide for a variety of reasons: highly motivated students trying to add on one more course; students who need to make up a failed class; socially awkward kids who work better in an alternative environment; or students like the Tompkinses who are unable to attend traditional classes. Some studies suggest that in 10 years, 50 percent of learning will be done online.