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The study found that students who took all or part of their instruction online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through face-to-face instruction. Further, those who took "blended" courses -- those that combine elements of online learning and face-to-face instruction -- appeared to do best of all. That finding could be significant as many colleges report that blended instruction is among the fastest-growing types of enrollment.

While the new study provides a strong endorsement of online learning, it also notes findings about the relative success (or lack thereof) of various teaching techniques used in online courses. The use of video or online quizzes -- frequently encouraged for online education -- "does not appear to enhance learning," the report says.

But noting the caveats in the report about factors other than medium of instruction, he said that "we should not take the report as saying it is simply better to move to online learning. These results demonstrate why more research is needed -- broadly based research that moves well beyond case studies conducted by distance education practitioners, research focused on student retention in online environments and especially research that looks behind the instructional medium to isolate the characteristics of instruction that produce positive results. Successful education has always been about engaging students whether it is in an online environment, face to face or in a blended setting. And fundamental to that is having faculty who are fully supported and engaged in that process as well."

Let's assume you have engaged students in worthwhile class work and it is time for them to involve themselves in an inquiry related to it and of interest to them. Forget about "research," forget about "the term paper,î abandon the often calcified list of "subjects." Here is a proposed series of steps and assignments for the process.

* "significant learningî ó that which raises questions and problems whose answers and solutions promote further curiosity and learning that have the potential to develop into a lifelong pursuit.

Assignment A: Ask students to prepare three carefully worded questions on a matter related to classwork whose answers they might like to pursue.

“What the study demonstrates is that the variability in bilingual babies’ experience keeps them open,” said Dr. Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington and one of the authors of the study. “They do not show the perceptual narrowing as soon as monolingual babies do. It’s another piece of evidence that what you experience shapes the brain.

In one recent study, Dr. Werker and her collaborators showed that babies born to bilingual mothers not only prefer both of those languages over others — but are also able to register that the two languages are different.

Over the past decade, Ellen Bialystok, a distinguished research professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, has shown that bilingual children develop crucial skills in addition to their double vocabularies, learning different ways to solve logic problems or to handle multitasking, skills that are often considered part of the brain’s so-called executive function.

First, face-to-face conversation is a dynamic interaction between two people. Talking is a kind of turn-taking, and turn-taking is a rhythm that organizes how and when things unfold. When people talk, they modify their postures and tempos so that they correspond. (There is fascinating research on this sort of "coordination dynamics" by, among others, J.A. Scott Kelso and colleagues.) And moreover, they tend jointly to pay attention to what is going on around them. One upshot of this is that when you are talking with someone, you actually experience that they are listening. Talking, in this sense, is like dancing. You can tell whether someone is dancing with you or whether they have detached and lost interest.

It is often very difficult to establish this sort dynamic engagement or coupling to someone over a cell phone. The connection is often just not good enough for that. One has the experience of speaking, but one lacks the corresponding experience of being heard. You literally lack the feedback — the coordinated breathing, the modulations of tones of voice, etc — that signals the other’s focus on you. And so you shout.

When a cell-phone connection is excellent, you and your remote partner to start up a dance together. But crucially, you dance to music that only you and your partner hear. That is, you succeed in establishing the kind of dynamic integration and entrainment that is typical of face-to-face conversation. And that has the effect of transporting you right out of your physical environment into one that you share with your conversation partner. And this in turn has the effect of guaranteeing that your tone of voice and volume will be inappropriate for your actual physical conditions

fter my experiences in November participating in GlobalEdCon10 conference, I'm realizing that college learning isn't hitting the mark in this area, as well as it could be.  GlobalEdCon10 was a ground-breaking event for education, in my opinion  While most educators still travel to attend conferences face-to-face (and I do see value in doing so) or attends pre-organized conferences virtually in tandem with face-to-face participants, GlobalEdCon10 seems to have found the perfect recipe for collaborative, open sharing of global learning ideas.

As a first time student enrolled in an online course, I am dismayed by the total lack of the instructor's input. She merely feeds us the publisher's materials, has a teaching assistant grade the homework and pulls her tests from the publisher's test bank. I could teach this course, easily, myself.

There is no "teaching" or explanation, just self study. Silly things are graded like participation in discussions, and homework is often graded despite the fact the solutions manuals are all available online for students. Many online courses are taught by for-profit schools whose key motivation is to never fail students and to keep their tuition dollars flowing in. Even traditional schools' online courses are silly. The teacher has no way to know who is taking the exams. Exams are open book. Let's all start calling it the sham that it really is.

I have to say, from my experience as a student in an Ivy League school on the ground I had experiences like that. You can't judge an entire way of teaching and learning from these experiences.I have been teaching graduate school online since 1999. I engage actively with learners one on one, in small groups and in the class. I use meeting technologies as well as the Blackboard discussion. Learners work independently or collaboratively, depending on the assignment. I review and make detailed comments on their writing in assignments that require them to reasearch and draw on multiple scholarly sources. There is typically not one textbook, so "publisher's materials" or "open book exams" are non-existent. Even discussion assignments are submitted in full APA style and require references to the assigned and other scholarly readings. Higher order critical and creative thinking, original analysis, are required.

This fall, NGLC will host a “Back to Campus” series of webinars targeting the underlying challenges facing higher education today and IT’s role as an enabler of change. Each web seminar is free and open to the public, with virtual seating offered on a first-come, first-served basis.

My experience in creating podcasts came through much nobler endeavors. It began with a research project in the working-class neighborhoods of North Belfast and a frustrated conversation over pints in a pub. I was on a research high after an interview with two women of very different political backgrounds. They were friends, brought together by the work of a local nonprofit, and their mutual admiration shone from the lightning-fast banter that they tossed back and forth throughout the interview. It was clear to me that they were a perfect example of a friendship from different sides of the political divide. But my friend at the pub just couldn't get it. He suggested that their friendship might be contrived, a mere show for my benefit, or that if real, it didn't mean as much as I thought. Exasperated, I pulled out my recorder and played the conversation back to him. As their Belfast accents filled up our corner booth, I could see his posture slacken and the battle turn my way. In that moment, I decided that only a podcast could finish telling my story. Over the next months, armed with just an MP3 player and some freeware suggested by a friend, I worked to piece together the story of North Belfast through interviews, conversations, and the sounds of the streets. The result was crude, elementary, and slightly difficult to listen to. But I was hooked.

Student Use (and Misuse) of Podcast Technology

In fact, the iPod topped the list of the most "in" things on campus in 2006, according to Student Monitor's Lifestyle & Media Study.

The scholarship of teaching, in particular, has been overlooked for too long.

They serve as conservators and promulgators of our cultural memories

The value of what happens on a campus is hard to quantify, but it can be life-changing. That's true for most of us who have chosen to work in higher education, as it is for many former students who pursued work in "the real world."

As for those other 18 credits, Cencich and Khalil say they are confident that students will learn just as well online as they did in the classroom.

For professors, it means that no one would be losing his or her job — for now, anyway

PASSHE faces the usual doubts about fully online language instruction — especially in the context of a whole degree program, which would theoretically shepherd students all the way from ignorance to proficiency without ever having them cross the threshold of a classroom.

Over the next decade, the most vibrant innovations in education will take place outside traditional institutions.

The forecast does not predict what will happen, but rather serves as a guide to the as-yet-unwritten future. It is designed to help you see connections among things that once seemed unrelated and to help you consider the changes and challenges that you are facing today within the context of wider patterns of change.

a critical dilemma facing these institutions: how to reconcile bottom-up developments in education with the traditional top-down hierarchy that is currently in place.

Fred Lokken, associate dean for the Truckee Meadows Community College WebCollege and author of the technology-council report, said he thinks that one reason distance education has grown more quickly at community colleges than it has in general is because community colleges are more enthusiastic about it than universities are.

Most respondents cited the economic downturn as the main reason for growth in online enrollment, and other respondents said that the growth was typical or was a result of new enrollment efforts.  Community-college enrollment has increased in general with the downturn, and Mr. Lokken said that online courses are particularly appealing to people who are job hunting.

The survey also found that for administrators, the greatest challenge in distance learning was a lack of support staff needed for training and technical assistance. In regard to faculty, the administrators who responded to the survey said, workload issues were the biggest obstacle. For students, the institutions' greatest challenge was preparing them to take classes online.

I suggested that perhaps his daughter should not leave her full name when commenting on my blog, and that I would make this suggestion to all my students so as to protect those who wished to remain anonymous.

If, in your personal view, these ethics interfere with your own child’s learning, and reduce the likelihood that she will achieve future academic or professional successes, then I would encourage you to engage her in conversations about economics in your own preferred manner and direct her to online or print media that you think will better enhance her understanding of the subject yet still allow her to meet the requirements of my course without having to participate in the public discussions and debates occurring between students and teachers around the world on my blog.

At the beginning of the year, we talked about the privacy issues resulting from name-identified and web-searchable articles from ZIS students and class work on your website. By when do you think you will have past, present and future contributions annonymized?