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The author focuses on the use of blended education at two institutions: Wesleyan University and Bryn Mawr College. Both institutions are Carnegie Mellon University's Open Learning Initiative (OLI) to enhance courses previously taught solely face-to-face. Wesleyan University is using the OLI modules to tutor less-prepared students in introductory courses. The OLI course modules allow students to gain material at a faster pace than in a traditional classroom alone. Administrators at Wesleyan believe the blended model will reinforce the hands-on teaching practices their liberal arts program promotes.  Bryn Mawr as allowed faculty members to adopt OLI modules at their own initiative. Not only to the OLI modules assist the students in learning material faster, but the program also collects data on the student's learning patterns, personalizing the program through each use. Using personalized learning assistance will allow an elite institution, such as Bryn Mawr, to admit a wide range of students, with confidence less academically prepared students can be successful.  In initial research, students enrolled in blended courses using the OLI module learn as much, if not more, as students in courses only meeting face-to-face. The persistence rates of lower-income students using the OLI module were close to 100 percent in Bryn Mawr's preliminary study. While liberal arts colleges may continue to build their reputations on small classes and personalized attention from faculty members, blended courses are able to enhance the traditional instruction model. Perhaps in the future, more liberal arts colleges will be using their blende technologies as a selling point to prospective students as Wesleyan and Bryn Mawr currently are.

PRWeb assists companies and organizations release news on their products and services, with extended reach through online searches. LoudCloud Systems, the creator of LoudCloud Learning Ecosystem, for Higher Education, promoted an enhanced version of their current product through PRWeb in July of 2012. The new LoudCloud Learning Ecosystem, for higher education, includes greater flexibility for teachers and administrators; a task centered design, a redesigned behavioral reader, and enhanced analytics on students, administration, and teachers. LoudCloud Systems establish themselves as an emerging leader in learning management systems in 2010, and has continued to impress the education industry with new products and upgrades. The learning solutions offered by LoudCloud are intuitive, collaborative, adaptive and intelligent. The system collects data on users and personalizes their learning experience based on each individual's learning styles. LoudCloud Learning Ecosystems, for Higher Education now offers more than 100 discreet rights, but also allows for segmented branding within one system for larger institutions.  LoudCloud Systems offers services for higher education and K-12 institutions. Administrators and information technology personnel are the intended audience for this article. The reader should remember LoudCloud wrote the article, with supervision by PRWeb. 

Four faculty members from Ferris State University share their experiences integrating technology into their classrooms, usingto the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning. The Center assists faculty members in learning technologies to enhance their lesson plans. All four faculty members insist the technology is easy to learn and use as enrichment to coursework. The technology allows the faculty members to establish a presence, both online and on-ground, all while using technology their students are already familiar with. Faculty members, as well as information technology employees, at higher education institutions are the intended audience for this video. Each faculty member described a different technology he or she uses within the classroom (both online and on-ground). The four technologies described include Adobe Connect, iTunes U, CPS pulse clickers, and Poll Everywhere. Adobe Connect is a way for students and faculty members to engage online, including back and forth real-time discussion. iTunes U allows faculty members to share podcasts of lectures and lessons for students to listen or watch at their leisure. CPS pulse clickers enable students to take tests and quizzes during class and receive immediate feedback and grades. The CPS pulse clickers also let the professor know what material students have or have not mastered, dictating the rest of the lecture. Finally, Poll Everywhere allows faculty to poll students before, during, or after class, increasing student engagement, as cell phones are typically used to poll.

The University of Delaware created a video highlighting one faculty member's use of technology within a study abroad program in Panama. Professor Jorge Cubillas works in the Foreign Languages and Literatures department at the University of Delaware. Cubillas uses Facebook and blogs to assist students in reinforcing material learned in class. The intended audience for this video is higher education administrators working with study abroad programs.  Cubillas creates a group within Facebook for the University of Delaware students studying in Panama each semester. Interestingly, Cubillas does not interact with the students using the Facebook group, but rather allows them to feel more comfortable by sharing with just students.  The Facebook group, according Cubillas, creates cohesion within the group and facilitates sharing of information and experiences among the students. Students also contribute to blogs, adding written passages, as well as personal videos, reflecting on their experiences so far. The students' written and oral skills in Spanish improve through their blogs, while also sharing great, personal experiences with the rest of the world.

Julie Phillips, an online instructor for Globe Education Network, shares an extensive list of suggestions for faculty members hoping to incorporate service-learning into an online course. On-ground courses have long included service-learning components at colleges and universities across the country. Over the past decade online programs have grown drastically, but have left the challenge of offering service-learning courses to online learners. Phillips offers a variety of suggestions to assist a faculty member or administrator develop an online course including a service-learning assignment. Below is a list of Phillips' recommendations: - Select an appropriate course - Establish clear expectations - Respond to email/outreach from students and community partners within 24-48 hours - Volunteering should align with course objectives - Identify challenges upfront - Communicate, communicate, communicate - Encourage reflection throughout the course - Listen to student concerns and work through them - Enlist feedback from students and community partners - Allow students to share their experiences - Requirements should be realistic - Never underestimate the power that hands-on experience has on student learning - Incorporate various resources into class to help guide students - Not all community partners are created the same - Get excited!

Published in a technology review journal through Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a marriage of technology and higher education is present. The intended audience is those interested in technology, as well as the world of higher education.  Although the article is titled The Crisis in Higher Education, a real sense of crisis is only found in the last few paragraphs.  Carr spends the majority of the article describing recent advances that have been made in technology influencing higher education. Two separate innovations and advances will soon combine in the future to bring online and technology-assisted education to a new level: massive open online courses (MOOCs) and software programs that collect data and analyze student learning behaviors in order to offer individualized teaching and tutoring.  While MOOCs, offered through organizations such as Coursera, Udacity, and edX, are testing the best way to present information to large groups of students located all over the world, they are also collecting learning behavior data at the same time. Software programmers are using their own data, combined with the data from MOOCs, to help develop more intuitive programs to aid in online learning. Critics argue that online classrooms cannot compare with conversations in on-ground classes or the relationship between a faculty member and a student on campus. The future of higher education is unknown, but Carr believes technology is leading the way. One of the main concerns regarding the adoption of new technology is campuses will rush into using it without researching the best options and ways to implement.  

Steve Kolowich, a technology reporter for Inside Higher Education, discusses the learning management systems (LMS) of the future. The article, geared towards an audience of higher education professionals, as well as those interested in higher education technology, highlights three up and coming LMS providers: Coursekit, Instructure Canvas, and Chegg. Instructure Canvas is an open-source LMS, offering its services to more than 100 institutions, including Brown University and Auburn University. The program is marketed to administrators, as well as individual instructors. Coursekit, another LMS, is free and currently only markets to individual professors. In addition to course management, Coursekit plans to offer students assistance in locating books and homework help, in the future. A significant difference between Coursekit and other LMS is their creation of a social network oriented around education.  Chegg, formerly a solely text rental organization, has rebranded the company into a social education platform. Although Chegg is not a LMS, some of the services offered are similar. Students can search texts associated with courses at their institution, utilize a homework help center and speak with a tutor in India, and buy and sell notes through Notehall. Based on Kolowich's description of three promising LMS-like services, Blackboard (the current majority LMS market shareholder) should be prepared for a new wave of competition.

Steven Kolowich, a technology reporter for Inside Higher Education, describes the online support initiative supporting online programs at Northern Virginia Community College. The intended audience for the article is higher education officials, including institutions expanding into online education. Kolowich highlights NOVA's experience with online education and how the College turned a mediocre program into a successful one.   When NOVA began an online program in the mid-2000's, the vice president for instruction and information technology, Steven Sachs, dedicated a few IT employees to help online students with small, instructional issues. After some research, Sachs realized for-profit colleges were spending more than half of their budgets on support services for students, such as financial aid counseling, job placement assistance, and academic advising. Shortly after this realization, Sachs implemented the "Next Level Initiative," spending more than $2 million to offer support to online students. The Next Level Initiative was extremely effective on all six of NOVA's campuses. Over the next four years, online programs grew four times faster than on-campus programs. Additionally, the difference in completion between online and on-ground students fell from 16% to 8%. Kolowich uses NOVA as an example to express how imperative support services are for online students.

Brad Jennings, a Louisburg College employee, and education technology enthusiast, created a video on how to use the Open Learning Initiative. The video is targeted towards higher education instructors and educating faculty members in incorporating the Open Learning Initiative in their courses. The Open Learning Initiative assists students in learning course material through an online site, collecting data on student learning styles, and adapting how information is presented for each student. The courses are self-paced and allow students to master material at their own speed. Jennings navigates the Open Learning Initiative website, explaining the three log-in options: instructors, independent learners, and academic students. An instructor can create an account, and then log-in to create online courses for free. There may be small maintenance fees associated with a few select classes, but the Open Learning Initiative team offers to waive the cost if it prevents a student from enrolling. The additional costs are typically $10 to $15. The instructor would download the Course Builder application, build their course, and house it on the Open Learning Initiative cloud for free. Once the course has been created, students can log on to the Open Learning Initiative site and enter the course key to view the material. 

This article offers a theoretical perspective from authors at the University of Queensland in Australia to explain the complex nature of why faculty in higher education struggle with incorporating new technology and innovative teaching strategies into their existing coursework. First, the authors review current literature about emerging Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) capabilities. They also introduce Latane's (1981) Dynamic Social Impact Theory, which they have updated to introduce the special case of Dynamic Impact of Social Connectivity (DISC) theory and how it applies to this phenomenon of higher education academics engaging with ICTs. The authors conclude that higher education curricula must change sufficiently and sustainably to embrace emerging ICT capabilities, in order to maximize faculty connectivity and collaboration. This article would be helpful for administrators who assist faculty in further developing their teaching and familiarity with technology in their courses.

tech for individuals with disabilities in a learning environment.

This is a guest post by Dereck Bruff, and assistant director at the Center for Teaching and Learning in Vanderbilt University, Dwayne Harapnuik, director of faculty enrichment at Abilene Christian University, and Jim Julius, associate director at Instructional Technology Services, San Diego University. The post is a summary of an interactive session of a Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network conference to discuss the question of whether or not the technological revolution, characterized by social technologies and access to the web, can transcend the slow evolutional environment of Higher education institutions. 59 obstacles were identified as the culprits for hindering the advancement of higher education from the industrial model and teaching paradigm, to a learning paradigm. Six of the problems were named in the article are: faculty mistrust; lack of effective modeling; loss of faculty control during the shift to student centered learning; not enough emphasis placed on faculty development professionals; faculty closed off to being open to new technologies; and skepticism about the ability of technology to produce depth of learning. The authors and other POD members agreed that the solution would be to move from a faculty centered teaching mode to a student-centered one, and to encourage a culture of openness by encourage the sharing of effective uses of technology between faculty members. The article is directed at higher education institutions that wish to change their educational landscape.

Rossing, an assistant professor of communication studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, discusses the impact of mobile technology on liberal education based on his own personal experience of incorporating the use of ipads in his communication courses. He advocates the use of mobile technology in the classroom, albeit cautiously. He acknowledges the potential distraction element of mobile technology, and understands why some faculty members might be hesitant to allow its usage in their classrooms. He is certain however that mobile technology is here to stay, and faculty members should embrace rather than ignore the inevitable fact. Faculty should focus instead on the real message of mobile technology, and that is collaboration. Introducing iPads to his classroom initiated what would become the constant exchange of information between students with iPhones and iPads. Students became active learners, sharing and peer reviewing content, and ultimately decreasing the time it took to meet learning objectives.

This is a list of the top five learning management systems as compiled by Gilford Education Group. The group provides assistance to many e-learning and online learning institutions on selection and evaluation of their learning management systems. The five learning management systems are Adrenna Work Force 7 and Adrenna Academic, Blackboard, Desire2Learn Learning Suite, Moodle, and Sakai OAE. Adrenna has two platforms, the Adrenna Work Force 7 and the Adrenna Academic. The former is designed for professional education workforce with a focus on online training and development. It has facilities social learning, collaboration and authoring. The latter Adrenna Academic is designed for the academic environment with many features including mobile learning. Blackboard is said to build technology that provides a variety of learning pathways including collaboration. Desire2Learn fosters collaboration and supports different learning environments. Moodle is used in a lot of institutions, is free and valuable for designing online courses. Lastly the Sakai OAE fosters collaboration and user sharing based on the needs of students, educators and researchers. This article is a useful resource for anyone who wants a brief overview of learning management systems.