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"Online education is often held out as a way to increase access to higher education, especially for those -- adult students, the academically underprepared, members of some minority groups -- who have historically been underrepresented in college. But that access is meaningful only if it leads somewhere, and if the education students get helps them reach their goals. New data from a long-term study by the Community College Research Center at Columbia University's Teachers College suggest that some of the students most often targeted in online learning's access mission are less likely than their peers to benefit from -- and may in fact be hurt by -- digital as opposed to face-to-face instruction. The study did not, however, account for the quality of the online courses studied, making it difficult to draw from its findings overly sweeping generalizations about the efficacy of online learning."

Interesting article on online learning - completion rates, completers . . .

"March 1, 2011 Designing Online Courses with Course Updates in Mind By: Patti Shank, PhD, CPT in Online Education Add Comment Online courses are rarely "done." Over time, things change, including the curriculum and content (because of changes in the field and changes to available content) and the technologies (ways that the content can be delivered and tools for interacting with it and with others in the courses, including you). Bottom line: Just like initial course development, updating courses can be quite a lot of work. You can reduce the hassles and work (but not eliminate them) by designing your online courses with updating them in mind. That is, design so that updating is built into the process, not tacked on as an afterthought. Identify change-likely elements"

This article might really help us decide how to keep our courses updated more effectively.

"Every college that offers online courses should require students to pass an online orientation. I'm envisioning a one-credit course, taken online, that covers the technical requirements of online classes, familiarizes students with the pedagogical approaches they can expect, addresses candidly the time commitment and degree of responsibility and motivation required, and essentially teaches students how to take a course online."

"The online Master of Education program in instructional design and technology at my school, West Texas A&M University, has more than doubled its admissions during the last two years, even as similar programs nationwide have struggled. This is because we consistently honor six very simple practices in every course in the program. During my career as a senior instructional designer at Microsoft and Boeing, these practices were universal for online instruction. I have been shocked to learn how many online college courses incorporate none of them. So, with apologies, here we go:"

"Blended learning is a hybrid of classroom and online learning that includes some of the conveniences of online courses without the complete loss of face-to-face contact. The present study used a causal-comparative design to examine the relationship of sense of community between traditional classroom, blended, and fully online higher education learning environments. Evidence is provided to suggest that blended courses produce a stronger sense of community among students than either traditional or fully online courses."

Strategies for Creating Social Presence This section examines strategies that will help establish and maintain social presence within online environments. In this section, I offer strategies for the three groups of individuals involved with the three functions of these environments: (1) course designers (course design), (2) instructors (delivery and management), and (3) participants (participation). In reviewing the literature, the main responsibility for creating social presence is placed on the instructors. However, based on my personal experience as an online course designer and online course participant, I contend that the responsibility for establishing and maintaining social presence extends beyond the role of the instructor

"But a new study urges caution to those who believe that online education is a panacea for educating more community college students. The study finds that students who enrolled in online courses -- controlling for various factors that tend to predict success -- were more likely to fail or drop out of the courses than were those who took the same courses in person. Notably, there was not a gap in completion between those enrolled in hybrid and in-person courses. "

"Welcome to the brave new world of Massive Open Online Courses - known as MOOCs - a tool for democratizing higher education. While the vast potential of free online courses has excited theoretical interest for decades, in the past few months hundreds of thousands of motivated students around the world who lack access to elite universities have been embracing them as a path toward sophisticated skills and high-paying jobs, without paying tuition or collecting a college degree. And in what some see as a threat to traditional institutions, several of these courses now come with an informal credential (though that, in most cases, will not be free). "

Can you imagine 160,000 students registered in a course?

See also http://www.tonybates.ca/2012/03/06/discussion-of-moocs-more-links-and-questions/ for more info on MOOCs. This link notes the completion rates for some courses.

"The small liberal-arts college in this Pennsylvania town offers students an intimate learning experience. There is one professor for every eight students, each of whom pays about $40,000 for that kind of access. Now the college wants to add courses that are partly online into this setting, and it wants other liberal-arts institutions to follow suit."

Experts discussing the competencies needed to be successful in an online teaching environment.

"The Rental Phenomenon In the past two years, the post-secondary textbook rental market has exploded. Driven by the outcry over book prices, federal legislation, readily available pricing information on the Internet, and sophisticated web-based rental management platforms, old and new competitors are disrupting the $10 billion college textbook business. Book rental isn't really a new phenomenon-a few college stores have been renting books since the Civil War. The National Association of College Stores (NACS) proclaimed fall 2010 as the "Year of the Rental." Players include long-timers like Follett and Budgetext, institutional stores and fast-growing start-ups. BookRenter, started in 2008, netted $40 million from investors in a funding round this past February. Chegg, started in 2007, has raised $200+ million in venture capital and attracted senior management from Yahoo and Netflix. The same drivers are growing trade in used books, eBooks, and online instructional content. Rental is also driving new business models for sourcing and distributing educational materials that may carry the industry forward into digital. Having book inventory isn't necessarily required-at least one high-flying firm, BookRenter, exists mainly as an online marketplace. Read on to see how this change in distribution is impacting the higher education market. Next month we'll look at what all this means for K-12."

"Colleges themselves are also finding a need to craft multiple identities online, setting up a different Facebook page and Twitter account for every department or research lab. The University of Virginia's library has 14 Facebook accounts. (One focuses on the science-and-engineering library, another on the fine-arts library, and so on.) Many colleges now count dozens of official Twitter accounts, plus a tangle of pages on Facebook, channels on YouTube, and photo collections on sites like Flickr. In the past year, more colleges have tried to get a handle on their many online identities, crafting social-networking policies and creating a new job position-social-media strategist-to try to bring some sort of order to the chatter."