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Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) today announced the launch of edX, a transformational partnership in online education. Through edX, the two institutions will collaborate to enhance campus-based teaching and learning and build a global community of online learners.

"I think all I want to do here is point out that all the things professors use Blackboard for here most (as well as a few of the things that not many people use Blackboard for) can be done for a lot less money than whatever our Blackboard license costs. Sometimes they can be done for no money at all."

The ECP submission form and the extensive ECP rubric provide an outstanding frame of reference for reflecting on and reviewing online course elements.  Through the years I've served as a director in the program, I have spoken with many individual faculty members as well as many members of design and development teams. Many have used the ECP rubric in a number of creative ways - helping to raise awareness on what is needed for quality online learning strategies and guiding course evaluations.  In fact, the ECP rubric identifies seventeen important elements needed for effective online learning and provides details on the criteria that would deem each category exemplary.  The ECP submission form requires careful thought and reflection about course design, interaction and collaboration, assessment, and learner support as well as a narrative describing the best practices demonstrated in the course for each category. 

 Motivational scaffolding consisted of using chat to run study skills support groups, where stu- dents were helped to stay on task, and instructor office hours. Students were classified as either high or low procrastinators, and randomly assigned to each version, and two instructors alternated between versions taught from one term to the other. Results showed that procrastinating students, for whom the lack of structure of distance learning may be problematic, performed better in the motivationally-scaffolded version than the traditional, while non-procrastinating students performed equally in both.