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In 2007, the Sloan Consortium issued a report on the extent and nature of online learning in K-12 schools. Entitled, K-12 Online Learning: A Survey of U.S. School District Administrators, this report was welcomed by professional organizations and the popular media interested in the use of online technology for instruction in the public schools. It was based on a national survey of school district administrators during the 2005-2006 academic year. It was one of the first studies to collect data on and compare fully online and blended learning (part online and part traditional face-to-face instruction) in K-12 schools. The purpose of this current study is to replicate the original study in order to substantiate its findings and to examine what if any changes occurred in online learning in K-12 school districts. The current study was conducted two years later and was based on a national survey of school district administrators during the 2007-2008 academic year.

Welcome to the Moodle community! Moodle is a Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It is a Free web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites. Moodle.org is our community site where Moodle is made and discussed. Please use the menus to explore and join in!

In part one of this two-part series, we discussed technology for overall communication and safety/security in schools. Today we highlight classroom learning technologies January 14, 2008 By Jenny Carless, News@Cisco It is not always easy to reach consensus on important education issues. Concerned people, all of whom have children's best interests at heart, may not be able to agree on content or strategies. But one thing a majority of Americans do agree on, according to a recent poll, is the importance of information technology to the future of learning and 21st century skills.

Discussions in Distance Learning are a series of audiocasts featuring Del Mar College faculty discussing issues and trends in the fields of instructional technology and distance education. Each session is approximately 15 minutes in length and can be listened to by clicking the episode title. You can also subscribe to Discussions in Distance Learning by using a podcast subscription service, also known as an aggregator. Subscribing will download the latest episode directly to your computer each time you log in to your aggregator service. Popular aggregator subscription services include iTunes (www.itunes.com), Yahoo (podcast.yahoo.com), and Juice (juicereceiver.sourceforge.net).

Online Nation: Five Years of Growth in Online Learning represents the fifth annual report on the state of online learning in U.S. higher education. This year's study, like those for the previous four years, is aimed at answering some of the fundamental questions about the nature and extent of online education. Supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and based on responses from more than 2,500 colleges and universities, the study addresses the following key questions:

Unlocking Knowledge, Empowering Minds. Free lecture notes, exam, and videos from MIT. No registration required. "When I realized I could follow along with an MIT course... I thought, 'I can handle this!'" * Ali Sheikh Student United States Read more Free lecture notes, exams, and videos from MIT. No registration required. Learn more

Just as Malcolm Knowles is widely regarded as the father of adult learning theory, Robert Gagne is considered to be the foremost researcher and contributor to the systematic approach to instructional design and training. Gagne and his followers are known as behaviorists, and their focus is on the outcomes - or behaviors - that result from training.

We invite you to browse through the following studies and websites, which summarize the significant amount of research that has been conducted pertaining to the effectiveness of online instruction. The links below include a brief summary of the research, some examples, and an additional link to the study itself, for more information.

In 1956, Benjamin Bloom headed a group of educational psychologists who developed a classification of levels of intellectual behavior important in learning. Bloom found that over 95 % of the test questions students encounter require them to think only at the lowest possible level...the recall of information.

A hybrid approach to online learning offers important lessons for institutions entering the online arena

According to Robert Gagne, there are nine events that activate processes needed for effective learning.

The Medium is NOT the Message

The flexibility, ease and accessibility of online distance learning courses can be attractive selling points to students faced with hectic schedules. The fact that those classes require the same amount of work as traditional classes, though, is not. Online distance education courses at the University of Alaska are in high demand each semester, but they come with a high drop rate as well. Although the courses have a high attrition rate, Shane Southwick, operations manager for UAA's distance education service, said it is still better than the national average.

There is no shortage of associate degree programs online, but private four-year colleges don't tend to run them. Looking for a job? See all new postings Browse all job listings: Faculty: 3,150 Administrative: 1,453 Executive: 201 FEATURED EMPLOYERS Post a job Related stories * When IM Is the Best Way to Stay on Top, Aug. 29 * Distance Ed Continues Rapid Growth at Community Colleges, April 7 * Making Online Learning Mandatory, April 17, 2007 * Surge in Distance Ed at Community Colleges, April 16, 2007 * Scrutiny for Transfer Program, Feb. 21, 2007 E-mail this page E-mail Print this page Print This fall, Tiffin University is trying a new model for an online two-year degree program. The institution, which was founded in 1888, is launching an associate of arts degree in general studies as part of what it calls Ivy Bridge College, an online-only program that targets traditional-aged students who intend to transfer into four-year institutions once they're done. The program is unusual for being developed at a four-year private college, and also because of who it intends to enroll and what kind of degree the students will be earning.

Community colleges are increasingly finding that many of the issues they deal with on a day-to-day basis - retention and remedial education, to name two - are just as present among the students they don't see as the ones who show up for class on campus. That's because distance learners tend to drop out more readily than students who have regular, face-to-face contact with their instructors. And that fact, seen in retention statistics comparing students in traditional and online courses, motivated the City Colleges of Chicago to start at the beginning: at orientation. The system's Center for Distance Learning, which offers over 90 courses and has existed in some form for more than 50 years, started a project on student retention several years ago.

In March 1987, the AAHE Bulletin first published "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education." With support from Lilly Endowment, that document was followed by a Seven Principles Faculty Inventory and an Institutional Inventory (Johnson Foundation, 1989) and by a Student Inventory (1990). The Principles, created by Art Chickering and Zelda Gamson with help from higher education colleagues, AAHE, and the Education Commission of the States, with support from the Johnson Foundation, distilled findings from decades of research on the undergraduate experience.

ABSTRACT This study has two primary objectives. First, we want to know how students who enroll in online classes differ from their peers in traditional lecture classes. Our second objective involves both exploring what factors influence performance among online students, as well as whether those factors differ for online and lecture students. Our comparisons are of two large sections of a course in computer programming for which almost the only difference was that one section consisted of on-campus lectures, and the other section was online. We find that online students do differ from lecture students in a number of important characteristics. However, when we examine class performance and course completion, we find that the factors which influence performance seem to have a stronger impact on lecture students, but we cannot reject the hypothesis that factor coefficients are the same for the two groups.