Group items tagged

Calling for Success: Online Retention Rates Get Boost From Personal Outreach BY MANDY ZATYNSKI »By mid-term summer semester 2012, Gina Cannell was struggling with her online statistics course. After failing a few quizzes and an exam, she worried her C grade would get worse. She asked her professor for extra help, but couldn't work through sample problems alone online. She needed live instruction. For two years, Cannell, a 43-year-old senior test engineer for Delta Air Lines, had excelled as an online student, but now she was facing failure or having to drop out. Her full-time job, family responsibilities, and a side business in interior design put on-campus classes-as well as tutoring-out of reach. Cannell wasn't sure what to do. Then Julili Fowler rang.

"The tenth annual survey, a collaborative effort between the Babson Survey Research Group and the College Board, is the leading barometer of online learning in the United States.  Based on responses from over 2,800 academic leaders, the complete survey report, "Changing Course: Ten Years of Tracking Online Education in the United States" can be downloaded here. Read the press release"

ELEARNSPACE LEARNING, NETWORKS, KNOWLEDGE, TECHNOLOGY, COMMUNITY

AECT STANDARDS FOR INITIAL AND ADVANCED PROGRAMS IN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS AND INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY (ECIT) The following text consists of excepts from the AECT document dealing with standards for instructional technology programs. Some minor editorial revisions have been made to the original text to allow concurrent discussion of the initial and advanced standards. Also, sections of the document that deal primarily with the institutional role, rather than the student role, have been omitted. These standards are concerned primarily with candidate competencies in the area of educational communications and instructional technologies (ECIT). Initial ECIT programs are defined as those which represent initial entry into the field. For example, a Baccalaureate or Master's program which prepares individuals for either initial school certification or entry level positions in business or industry may be considered an initial ECIT program. Advanced ECIT programs are defined as those which represent additional study in the field. A graduate program which advances knowledge and skills beyond the entry level for the profession constitutes an advanced ECIT program. It is expected that advanced candidates are able to demonstrate the competencies outlined in the initial program.

STELLAR briefing 2: the Future of TEL An overview on interim results from the STELLAR delphi study.

Meme-ifying Online Advocacy February 24, 2012 - 3:00am By Steve Kolowich The case for online education is often made like many other cases in higher education: in dense research papers with plenty of caveats. To wit, perhaps the most-cited document by advocates of online learning is a 2009 meta-study by the U.S. Education Department, which concluded that online education is probably at least as good as the face-to-face kind. That study has not appeared to have much pull with skeptical academic leaders and faculty. According to the Babson Survey Research Group, while student enrollments in online courses have increased 348 percent since 2003, the percentage of academic administrators who believe that learning outcomes in online courses are equal or superior to those of face-to-face courses has increased by only 10 percent during that time, from 57 to 67 percent. Those academic leaders estimate that even fewer of their faculty have changed their minds about online learning since early last decade. Now four lecturers at the University of Edinburgh are trying a different advocacy tack -- one more suited to the viral culture of the modern Web.  

"WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2014 257 - Intel, 3 others to manufacture Aakash 4 for Rs 3,500: Sibal - Free Press Journal Intel, 3 others to manufacture Aakash 4 for Rs 3,500: Sibal The new specifications mandate 2G/3G/4G connectivity with weight less than 500 gm, 4 GB storage capacity and Wi-Fi connectivity NEW DELHI : The government has finalised the tender for manufacture of Aakash 4 tablet with four companies, including chipmaker Intel Corp, selected for manufacturing the tablet at a cost of 3,500 rupees per tablet, Minister for Communications and Information Technology Kapil Sibal said on the sidelines of an event."

Updated E-Learning Definitions By John Sener, Founder/CKO, Sener Knowledge LLC | No Comments | July 7, 2015 | Leave a comment Definitions of E-Learning Courses and Programs Version 2.0 April 4, 2015 Developed for Discussion within the Online Learning Community By Frank Mayadas, Gary Miller, and John Sener As e-learning has evolved into a global change agent in higher education, it has become more diverse in its form and applications. This increased diversity has complicated our ability to share research findings and best practices, because we lack a shared set of definitions to distinguish among the many variations on e-learning that have arisen. This paper is designed to provide practitioners, researchers, and policy makers with a common set of terms and definitions to guide the ongoing development of the field. Our hope is that it will move us toward a set of shared, commonly understood definitions that will facilitate the sharing of research data and professional standards in our field. In developing the definitions below, we have tried to incorporate existing definitions developed by others and have incorporated comments from colleagues who have reviewed earlier drafts. We do not present these as the ultimate definitions, but as a step toward more commonly held standards as our field continues to evolve. Additions and revisions will be published periodically, as needed.

"Background Student authentication in distance education has been an issue of interest to federal policy makers for several years. The growth in enrollments and in the number of educational providers of online learning fueled concerns about the ability of institutions to verify the identity of online students throughout the cycle of an online course: registration, participation, assessment, academic credit. Passage of the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, followed by federal rulemaking, resulted in new regulations. One regulation required accrediting agencies to assure distance and correspondence education programs have processes in place to verify student identity. Photo of Asian female student in front of computer The issue is complex and frequently misrepresented. Among many e-learning professionals, the issue seems unfairly aimed only at online education when similar concerns of identity falsification could apply in traditional higher education settings. The policy and regulatory conversations concerning identify authentication, originally focused on academic dishonesty, now encompass the serious problem of financial aid fraud, as reported in some high profile cases. WCET has led a number of important efforts aimed at informing policy makers, accrediting agency leaders, and online program administrators of different approaches-pedagogical as well as technological-that ensure their compliance with the regulation but also raise the conversation to a more widely relevant discussion of academic integrity. WCET's Study Group on Academic Integrity and Student Authentication, established in March 2008, continues its work to identify and disseminate information on promising practices to promote academic integrity of which identity authentication is but one component."

Anders Norberg F d filosofilärare, rektor på gymnasiet, utbildningsutvecklare på Campus Skellefteå. Nu arbetar jag i ett projekt om omvärldsbevakning gällande utbildningsfrågor för Umeå universitet.

Funding Web Sites - University of Wisconsin

Russell T. Osguthorpe Center for Teaching and Learning Brigham Young University

This research explores student perceptions of course quality and instructor effectiveness in a hybrid MPA distance learning program. The MPA distance learning program under analysis utilizes a synchronous computer software program for 21 hours of instruction per course, an asynchronous computer software program for 21 hours of instruction per course, and six hours of on-campus in-person instruction per course. Survey data from students who have completed eight (8) courses in this distance learning program (repeated samples n = 90) will be compared to the evaluations of students who have taken the same courses from the same instructors in the on-campus program (n=100). The purpose of the research is two-fold. First, the research will determine if there is a significant difference between the perceptions of course quality and instructor effectiveness between students in the distance learning program and students enrolled in the on-campus program. Second, the research will explore student satisfaction with the use of the synchronous and asynchronous computer delivery methods. It is anticipated that students will express satisfaction levels with course quality and instructor effectiveness equal to, or exceeding, the satisfaction levels expressed by students in the on-campus program.

Information technology has been an important part of higher education since the development of the lantern slide in the mid-1800s. However, occasions in which the academy has been transformed by technology are rare. Viewed in a historical perspective, these occasions can be considered as a series of three epochs: the online public-access catalog epoch; the personal computer, Internet, and web epoch; and the enterprise systems (ERP, CMS) epoch. Certainly, developments are continuing, but for most colleges and universities, these three epochs no longer represent technological frontiers. Looking forward, those of us in higher education are now focusing our attention on technology applications for teaching, learning, and research-or what can be viewed as the epochs of teaching and learning with technology, and cyberinfrastructure. In this commentary, I'll be confining my comments to teaching and learning.

Funding Web Sites

There are literally hundreds of ways to use technology to implement Chickering and Gamson's seven principles of good practice (e.g., improving faculty-student contact, supporting collaboration among students, enriching active learning, etc.). These subscriber materials can help faculty improve teaching and learning with technology (TLT) in their own courses.

Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism are the three broad learning theories most often utilized in the creation of instructional environments. These theories, however, were developed in a time when learning was not impacted through technology. Over the last twenty years, technology has reorganized how we live, how we communicate, and how we learn. Learning needs and theories that describe learning principles and processes, should be reflective of underlying social environments. Vaill emphasizes that "learning must be a way of being - an ongoing set of attitudes and actions by individuals and groups that they employ to try to keep abreast o the surprising, novel, messy, obtrusive, recurring events…" (1996, p.42).