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What are the Disadvantages of Online Schooling for Higher Education? - 18 views

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    "hat Are the Disadvantages of Online Schooling for Higher Education? Today, online schooling for higher education is prevalent across many fields. While there are several benefits to online schooling, such as flexibility and convenience, there are also real and perceived disadvantages. Explore some of the potential drawbacks of online learning. View 10 Popular Schools » Online Schooling In 2012, about a quarter of undergraduate college students were enrolled in distance education courses as part -- if not all -- of their studies, according to a 2014 report from the National Center for Education Statistics. That same data found that 29.8% of graduate students in this country are enrolled in some or all distance learning classes as well. A 2013 report from Babson Survey Research Group and Quahog Research Group, LLC, pointed out that approximately 86.5% of higher education institutions offer distance learning classes. Clearly, online schooling is commonplace. Disadvantages: Student Perspective Despite advantages, online schooling is not the right fit for every student. Taking online courses is generally believed to require more self-discipline than completing a degree on campus, a belief that is supported by SCHEV -- the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. Because online schooling options often allow students to complete much of the coursework at their own pace, students must be motivated to stay on schedule and manage their time accordingly. Other potential disadvantages from a student's viewpoint may include the following: Less Instructional Support Although instructors are available to students via e-mail, telephone, Web discussion boards and other online means, some students may see the lack of face-to-face interaction and one-on-one instruction as a challenge. A lack of communication or miscommunication between instructors and students may frustrate students who are struggling with course materials. That could be exacerbated by the casual nature
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Another Look at the Weaknesses of Online Learning - Innovations - The Chronicle of High... - 86 views

shared by Karen Balnis on 28 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • have been lucky enough to have taught the full range of our freshman / sophmore undergraduate offerings as both an onsite and online instructor. While I have thoroughly enjoyed both formats - and very much so - I must admit that my experiences online have been *much* more positive than onsite instruction. Let me try and elucidate:1. While in the onsite classroom you have the opportunity to think on your feet and challenge and be experiential on your feet to reactions to the students who speak, in the online classroom, you are able to meet *every* class member and challenge their minds and ideas. The students who would normally be lost in a classroom of 35-40 are met and developed each day or week at their level and pushed to consider ideas they might not have considered. 2. I am able to reach the entire class through multimedia exhibits in each of the weekly units - journal articles, non-copyrighted film clips (and many from our university's purchased collection under an agreement for both onsite classroom and online classroom use), photography, art, patents, etc, that the students would not see - or would otherwise ignore - in an onsite classroom. We incorporate this information into our discussions and make it part of the larger whole of history.3. Each student and I - on the phone during office hours or in e-mail - discuss the creation of their term papers - and discuss midterm and final "anxiety" issues - and as they are used to the online format, and regular communication with me through the discussion boards, they respond much more readily than onsite students, whom I have found I have to pressure to talk to me. 4. I am able to accommodate students from around the country - and around the world. I have had enrolled in my class students from Japan, Indonesia, India, England - and many other countries. As a result, I have set up a *very* specific Skype address *only* for use of my students. They are required to set up the time and day with me ahead of time and I need to approve that request, but for them (and for some of my students scattered all over the state and US), the face time is invaluable in helping them feel "connected" - and I am more than happy to offer it. 5. As the software upgrades, the possibilities of what I can offer become more and more amazing, and the ease of use for both me - and for the students -  becomes astronomically better. Many have never known the software, so they don't notice it - but those who have taken online courses before cheer it on. Software does not achieve backwards. As very few of these issues are met by the onsite classroom, I am leaning more and more toward the online classroom as the better mode of instruction. Yes, there are times I *really* miss the onsite opportunities, but then I think of the above distinctions and realize that yes, I am where I should be, and virtually *ALL* the students are getting far more for their money than they would get in an onsite classroom. This is the wave of the future, and it holds such amazing promise. Already I think we are seeing clear and fruitful results, and if academics receive effective - and continuing - instruction and support from the very beginning, I cannot imagine why one would ever go back. The only reason I can think of *not* doing this is if the instructor has his or her *own* fear of computers. Beyond that - please, please jump on the bandwagon, swallow your fears, and learn how to do this with vigor. I don't think you will ever be sorry.PhD2BinUS
  • have been lucky enough to have taught the full range of our freshman / sophmore undergraduate offerings as both an onsite and online instructor. While I have thoroughly enjoyed both formats - and very much so - I must admit that my experiences online have been *much* more positive than onsite instruction. Let me try and elucidate:
  • While I have thoroughly enjoyed both formats - and very much so - I must admit that my experiences online have been *much* more positive than onsite instruction. Let me try and elucidate:
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    I am a graduate student at Sam Houston State University and before I started grad school I never had taken an online course before. My opinion then was that online courses were a joke and you couldn't learn from taking a course online. Now my opinion has done a complete 180. The teachers post numerous youtube videos and other helpful tools for each assignment so that anyone can successfully complete the assignment no matter what their technology skill level is. I do not see much difference between online and face-to-face now because of the way the instructors teach the courses.
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Role and Function of Theory in Online Education Development and Delivery - 3 views

  • According to Bonk and Reynolds (1997), to promote higher-order thinking on the Web, online learning must create challenging activities that enable learners to link new information to old, acquire meaningful knowledge, and use their metacognitive abilities; hence, it is the instructional strategy and not the technology tha
  • According to Bonk and Reynolds (1997), to promote higher-order thinking on the Web, online learning must create challenging activities that enable learners to link new information to old, acquire meaningful knowledge, and use their metacognitive abilities; hence, it is the instructional strategy and not the technology that influences the quality of learning.
  • However, it is not the computer per se that makes students learn, but the design of the real-life models and simulations, and the students' interaction with those models and simulations. The computer is merely the vehicle that provides the processing capability and delivers the instruction to learners (Clark, 2001).
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  • Online learning allows for flexibility of access, from anywhere and usually at anytime—essentially, it allows participants to collapse time and space (Cole, 2000)—however, the learning materials must be designed properly to engage the learner and promote learning.
  • Cognitive psychology claims that learning involves the use of memory, motivation, and thinking, and that reflection plays an important part in learning.
  • The development of effective online learning materials should be based on proven and sound learning theories.
  • Early computer learning systems were designed based on a behaviorist approach to learning. The behaviorist school of thought, influenced by Thorndike (1913), Pavlov (1927), and Skinner (1974), postulates that learning is a change in observable behavior caused by external stimuli in the environment (Skinner, 1974).
  • Therefore, before any learning materials are developed, educators must, tacitly or explicitly, know the principles of learning and how students learn.
  • Constructivist theorists claim that learners interpret information and the world according to their personal reality, and that they learn by observation, processing, and interpretation, and then personalize the information into personal knowledge (Cooper, 1993; Wilson, 1997).
  • The design of online learning materials can include principles from all three. According to Ertmer and Newby (1993), the three schools of thought can in fact be used as a taxonomy for learning. Behaviorists' strategies can be used to teach the “what” (facts), cognitive strategies can be used to teach the “how” (processes and principles), and constructivist strategies can be used to teach the “why” (higher level thinking that promotes personal meaning and situated and contextual learning).
  • The behaviorist school sees the mind as a “black box,” in the sense that a response to a stimulus can be observed quantitatively, totally ignoring the effect of thought processes occurring in the mind.
  • Learners should be told the explicit outcomes of the learning so that they can set expectations and can judge for themselves whether or not they have achieved the outcome of the online lesson. 2.  Learners must be tested to determine whether or not they have achieved the learning outcome. Online testing or other forms of testing and assessment should be integrated into the learning sequence to check the learner's achievement level and to provide appropriate feedback. 3.  Learning materials must be sequenced appropriately to promote learning. The sequencing could take the form of simple to complex, known to unknown, and knowledge to application. 4.  Learners must be provided with feedback so that they can monitor how they are doing and take corrective action if required.
  • Cognitivists see learning as an internal process that involves memory, thinking, reflection, abstraction, motivation, and meta-cognition.
  • Online instruction must use strategies to allow learners to attend to the learning materials so that they can be transferred from the senses to the sensory store and then to working memory.
  • Online learning strategies must present the materials and use strategies to enable students to process the materials efficiently.
  • information should be organized or chunked in pieces of appropriate size to facilitate processing.
  • Use advance organizers to activate an existing cognitive structure or to provide the information to incorporate the details of the lesson (Ausubel, 1960).
  • Use pre-instructional questions to set expectations and to activate the learners' existing knowledge structure.
  • Use prerequisite test questions to activate the prerequisite knowledge structure required for learning the new materials.
  • To facilitate deep processing, learners should be asked to generate the information maps during the learning process or as a summary activity after the lesson (Bonk & Reynolds, 1997).
  • The cognitive school recognizes the importance of individual differences, and of including a variety of learning strategies in online instruction to accommodate those differences
  • The Kolb Learning Style Inventory (LSI) (Kolb, 1984) looks at how learners perceive and process information, whereas the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Myers, 1978) uses dichotomous scales to measure extroversion versus introversion, sensing versus intuition, thinking versus feeling, and judging versus perception. In the following discussion, we consider the Kolb Learning Style Inventory.
  • Attention: Capture the learners' attention at the start of the lesson and maintain it throughout the lesson. The online learning materials must include an activity at the start of the learning session to connect with the learners. Relevance: Inform learners of the importance of the lesson and how taking the lesson could benefit them. Strategies could include describing how learners will benefit from taking the lesson, and how they can use what they learn in real-life situations. This strategy helps to contextualize the learning and make it more meaningful, thereby maintaining interest throughout the learning session. Confidence: Use strategies such as designing for success and informing learners of the lesson expectations. Design for success by sequencing from simple to complex, or known to unknown, and use a competency-based approach where learners are given the opportunity to use different strategies to complete the lesson. Inform learners of the lesson outcome and provide ongoing encouragement to complete the lesson. Satisfaction: Provide feedback on performance and allow learners to apply what they learn in real-life situations. Learners like to know how they are doing, and they like to contextualize what they are learning by applying the information in real life.
  • Online strategies that facilitate the transfer of learning should be used to encourage application in different and real-life situations.
  • Constructivists see learners as being active rather than passive.
  • it is the individual learner's interpretation and processing of what is received through the senses that creates knowledge.
  • “the process of using a prior interpretation to construe a new or revised interpretation of the meaning of one's experience in order to guide future action” (p. 12).
  • Learning should be an active process. Keeping learners active doing meaningful activities results in high-level processing, which facilitates the creation of personalized meaning. Asking learners to apply the information in a practical situation is an active process, and facilitates personal interpretation and relevance.
  • Learners should construct their own knowledge rather than accepting that given by the instructor.
  • Collaborative and cooperative learning should be encouraged to facilitate constructivist learning (H
  • When assigning learners for group work, membership should be based on the expertise level and learning style of individual group members, so that individual team members can benefit from one another's strengths.
  •   Learners should be given control of the learning process
  • Learners should be given time and opportunity to reflect.
  • Learning should be made meaningful for learners. The learning materials should include examples that relate to students, so that they can make sense of the information.
  • Learning should be interactive to promote higher-level learning and social presence, and to help develop personal meaning. According to Heinich et al. (2002), learning is the development of new knowledge, skills, and attitudes as the learner interacts with information and the environment. Interaction is also critical to creating a sense of presence and a sense of community for online learners, and to promoting transformational learning (Murphy & Cifuentes, 2001). Learners receive the learning materials through the technology, process the information, and then personalize and contextualize the information.
  • Figure 1-6. Components of effective online learning.
  • Behaviorist strategies can be used to teach the facts (what); cognitivist strategies to teach the principles and processes (how); and constructivist strategies to teach the real-life and personal applications and contextual learning. There is a shift toward constructive learning, in which learners are given the opportunity to construct their own meaning from the information presented during the online sessions. The use of learning objects to promote flexibility and reuse of online materials to meet the needs of individual learners will become more common in the future. Online learning materials will be designed in small coherent segments, so that they can be redesigned for different learners and different contexts. Finally, online learning will be increasingly diverse to respond to different learning cultures, styles, and motivations.
  • Online instruction occurs when learners use the Web to go through the sequence of instruction, to complete the learning activities, and to achieve learning outcomes and objectives (Ally, 2002; Ritchie & Hoffman, 1997).
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    From:  FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATIONAL THEORY FOR ONLINE LEARNING
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U-Pace: Facilitating Academic Success for All Students (EDUCAUSE Quarterly) | EDUCAUSE - 5 views

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    The U-Pace instructional approach combines self-paced, mastery-based learning with instructor-initiated Amplified Assistance in an online learning environment. Extensive evaluation showed that, compared to conventional instruction approaches, U-Pace instruction facilitated greater learning and greater academic success for all students in Introduction to Psychology courses. In terms of resources, U-Pace requires only a learning management system (such as Blackboard, Desire2Learn, or Moodle). U-Pace can be applied in any course or discipline, and resources to help instructors adopt the U-Pace approach are freely available.
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iowaonlinelearning - Teaching Standards - 27 views

  • Creates a learning community that encourages collaboration and interaction, including student-teacher, student-student, and student-content (SREB D.2, Varvel VII.B, ITS 6.a)
    • Dean Whaley
       
      What I see in these is that many of these we should be doing already.
  • AEA PD Online Website HomeAbout UsFAQsCurrent InitiativesResearch & ResourcesInstructor ToolboxK-12 Online LearningProject OLLIE Current Projects • Transition Process• Marketing Plan• Job Descriptions guest · Join · Help · Sign In · Teaching StandardsProtected page Details and Tags Print Download PDF Backlinks Source Delete Rename Redirect Permissions Lock discussion (1) history notify me Details last edit by eabbey Mar 11, 2011 6:56 am - 26 revisions Tags none Iowa Online Teaching Standards Composed from Iowa Teaching Standards and Other Resources 1. Demonstrates ability to enhance academic performance and support for the agency's student achievement goals (ITS 1) • Knows and aligns instruction to the achievement goals of the local agency and the state, such as with the Iowa Core (Varvel I.A, ITS 1.f, ITS 3.a) • Continuously uses data to evaluate the accuracy and effectiveness of instructional strategies (SREB J.7, ITS 1.c) • Utilizes a course evaluation and student feedback data to improve the course (Varvel VI.F) • Provides and communicates evidence of learning and course data to students and colleagues (SREB J.6, ITS 1.a) 2. Demonstrates competence in content knowledge (including technological knowledge) appropriate to the instructional position (ITS 2) • Meets the professional teaching standards established by a state-licensing agency, or has the academic credentials in the field in which he or she is teaching (SREB A.1, Varvel II.A) • Knows the content of the subject to be taught and understands how to teach the content to students (SREB A.3, Varvel II.A, ITS 2.a) • Is knowledgeable and has the ability to use computer programs required in online education to improve learning and teaching, including course management software (CMS) and synchronous/asynchronous communication t
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How Usable Is Your Online Course Content? » Online College Search - Your Accr... - 60 views

  • it serves to focus (or refocus) or attention on the learner experience. All too often we are distracted by the latest and greatest tool and by the priorities of other stakeholders in the process
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    'A recent article from UXMag.com, geared toward web design topics, caught my attention with the "User Experience Honeycomb" developed by Peter Morville to guide designers in the creation of "useful, usable, engaging content." With its seven related facets, it could be a helpful decision-making resource for instructional designers and instructors creating activities for online courses.'
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Online Discussions: Tips for Instructors - 56 views

  • Online Discussions: Tips for Instructors Online discussions are much like face-to-face discussions: they require preparation and active management in order to facilitate student learning. However, added complexities exist in the online environment, such as getting students comfortable with the conferencing system and helping them to communicate clearly without the aid of nonverbal communication cues. This tips sheet outlines the benefits of online discussions, then provides tips for both planning and facilitating such discussions. Tips to pass on to your students are also included at the end.
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    Nearly complete and concise explanation with strategies for successful online discussions. Excellent resource. Needs only a rubric to round out fully.
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Resources for Developing Online Interaction | online learning insights - 50 views

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    A collection of resources to encourage interaction and building a community of learning for educators that seek to develop their skills and create online discussions and interaction. Organized by topics targeted to faculty, instructors, K-12 educators and instructional designers.
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How Do We Meet Today's Online Education Challenges? - OnlineColleges.net - 28 views

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    Identifying the best possible strategies for online education initiatives is a common goal for instructors, students, course designers, administrators, and technologists alike.
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San Antonio College officials debate online office hours | Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

  • The rest of the broader six-point policy was adopted, including a clause saying professors must maintain a five-day presence on the physical campus
  • . His college is in the midst of transitioning to a faculty-based advising system in which students will have to meet with an instructor before registering for classes
  • “What gets missed in the conversation is that my face-to-face instructors, if they’re teaching five classes, they’re seeing students for 12-and-a-half hours. That needs to be demonstrated in the online instruction before we talk about office hours.”
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  • McCrary sees moving formal office hours to the Web as the next natural step in that digital evolution. “I think this is the way of the future,” she said. “I think it will be coming one way or another.”
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Distance Learning: How Accessible are Online Educational Tools | American Foundation fo... - 5 views

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    More and more schools, colleges and universities are using online educational tools that students are required to use to obtain course syllabi, access lectures and associated material, participate in class discussions, read course material, and receive grades and feedback from instructors. These popular tools, such as Blackboard, can frequently pose significant barriers to students with vision loss because they do not work well, if at all, with computer programs commonly used by students who are blind or visually impaired to access content displayed on the computer screen. For example, screen reading software reads the contents of the screen aloud. Screen magnification software enlarges text and graphics displayed on the computer screen in a customized way.
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'There's Something Very Exciting Going On Here' - Jordan Weissmann - The Atlantic - 20 views

  • One effort I started in June was to announce a seed grant program to support individual faculty and small teams that wanted to try different ways of teaching their course. So the internal funding helps support students or assistants or web developers or other people to help faculty recraft all or part of their course in order to see if new approaches really help.
  • here isn't an actual fixed fund. We got about 40 applicants. Maybe 20 of those things we funded. Each one was up to $25,000. I think I'd like to continue that on a quarterly basis. And really, we're new at all this. So the scale of this effort will depend on the faculty input and the outcome of how effective we find this to be.
  • We now have the ability for individual faculty or programs on campuses to produce appealing online content with relatively low effort and distribute that wide
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  • we'd like to see a number of things tried so we can have a good discussion that's informed by rational experiment and collected data. Beyond these individual experiments, one class at a time, I think it would be great to have one or two departments really try to integrate an online experience into their core curriculum so we can understand how that works, so we can provide students more options
  • Many of these first round of MOOCs were produced with a webcam by an individual instructor using a tablet PC. That's on the order of a thousand dollars worth of equipment. Maybe. Certainly, it's extremely inexpensive compared with a laptop 5 years ago. So the cost of the technology is lower. There's good software for editing video -- we're in an era where producing video is similar to word processing. And everyone is used to interacting with people online in different ways than were prevalent 10 to 15 years ago. The kind of discussion you can have online is more sophisticated. People understand social conventions for how to contribute constructively to an online discussion. Those factors really contribute to the effectiveness of a MOOC or a smaller scale online course.
  • I think we'll see an evolution of a range of different ways of using technology, and probably some expansion of the set of options that a student has. Instead of going off to college, maybe some students will live in their parents' homes or elsewhere and take a first year or two online. Or they'll spend two years in college and finish two years online as they work. There will be different, in effect, educational programs coming out of this phenomenon that offer credit, certification, job placement, and other things beyond the self learning that MOOCs provide. So I think we really are going to see a transformation in the way teaching and learning are developed and delivered
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elearn Magazine: Five Expectations Students Should Have of an Online Instructor - 8 views

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    In recent years, online degree programs have become a widely accepted modality for many learners who seek a college degree. Most often, students who choose the flexibility of online college courses have family or work obligations that inhibit their ability to be placed in a traditional classroom. Online learning is a great choice for a student who is a self-motivated, and who is an independent learner.
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Web 2.0 Tools « - 8 views

  • Blogging the Learning Process Just as blogs can help foster conversation among students and faculty, instructors are discovering that they can also serve a more personal role, as a tool of reflection and self-appraisal. “The blog’s biggest strength is in the development and authentication of the student voice in learning,” notes Ruth Reynard, associate professor of education and the director of the Center for Instructional Technology at Trevecca Nazarene University (TN). Reynard uses blogs as a way to get students to reflect on their coursework–essentially by keeping an online journal in which they track their learning. As opposed to a traditional journal that is read only by the instructor, student
  • When used as a tool for reflection, blogs allow students to write at length about their own experiences as learners, and to read and comment on the insights posted on their classmates’ blogs. This type of public, shared self-reflection is difficult to achieve in other forms of collaborative online writing, such as discussion boards. “If the
  • Reynard has also found that blogs are a great tool for helping her graduate students learn to write academically. She requires her graduate students to embed hyperlinks to online sources that are influencing their thinking in their reflective blog posts.
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    useful info for blogging and reflective thinking
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6 Ways To Make Online Education More Inviting | Edudemic - 92 views

  • The most popular complaints about online learning are lack of engagement, slow response time from the instructor, and a loss of the sense of community.
  • Anxiety is the enemy of learning. Students need to know their teacher, environment, and peers. In a virtual environment, you can only rely on your user interface to do this for you.
  • A Participants List
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  • Instructor Bio and Contact Information
  • A Calendar
  • Learning Objectives and Expectations
  • Media
  • An Introductory Discussion
    • Perry Angelonga
       
      watch this
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FERPA and Social Media | Faculty Focus - 44 views

  • FERPA was never intended to place students into the box of a physical or online classroom to prevent them from learning from the public.
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    Great approach to helping instructors understand some basic issues of student privacy and the role of social media. This kind of argument might encourage people to assign the use of (and contribution to) open educational resources. "FERPA was never intended to place students into the box of a physical or online classroom to prevent them from learning from the public."
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In Online Learning, Don't Start with a Virtual "Syllabus Day" - The Learner's Way - 49 views

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    Sadly, many students have come to expect that there will nothing of consequence addressed on the first day of an on-campus class. It's often referred to as "Syllabus Day" because that is the only content of consequence presented by the instructor.
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Online Courses Should Always Include Proctored Finals, Economist Warns - Wired Campus -... - 34 views

  • Online economics students do not absorb much material from homework and chapter tests during the semester—perhaps because they expect to be able to cheat their way through the final exam.
  • she has noticed that her online students perform much worse than their classroom-taught counterparts when they are required to take a proctored, closed-book exam at the end of the semester.
  • Ms. Wachenheim’s findings parallel those of a 2008 study in the Journal of Economic Education. That study found indirect evidence that students cheat on unproctored online tests, because their performance on proctored exams was much more consistent with predictions based on their class ranks and their overall grade-point averages.
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  • Those include insisting on a proctored final exam and reminding students of that exam “early, often, and broadly, so students are ever-conscious that they will be responsible for the material in an unaided environment.”
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    "In self-paced courses, many students appeared to cram most of the homework and chapter exams into the final week of the semester. Few of them bothered to do the ungraded practice problems offered by the online publisher." First, where is the teaching? It sounds more like a case of poorly designed instruction...or a complete lack of instruction. Of course these students are not learning...they are not being taught. Also, if they are in classes which are actively taught by a teacher, then where are the formative assessments by the instructors? That teacher should know long before the final exam if the students know the material or not. A good teacher and a well developed online course would have a number of ways to determine this which do not allow for "cut and paste" or cheating. Finally, does this department test a student's memorization of material or the mastery of the concepts and and understanding of how to apply those concepts? Perhaps, there is also a need to reevaluate the assessments. Good teaching is good teaching. If a student is not learning the material, who is really to blame?
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MentorMob Lets Instructors Compile Learning Playlists -- Campus Technology - 61 views

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    A new Web 2.0 service facilitates compilation of "learning playlists" containing links to articles and videos that educators can make available to their students and others. MentorMob, from a company by the same name, is a free Web site that provides a repository for aggregating and organizing online educational resources. Once material is added, the viewer, such as a student, can work through the playlist in "steps."
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EduKateMe_ClassofSpring2015 » Blog Archive » Service Learning Project - Diffe... - 18 views

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    Five online tools to help elementary music instructors meet the needs of diverse learners.
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