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"A number of experiments are using new kinds of data - such as how many times a student has clicked on an e-textbook or logged in to a class Web page - to measure and guide learning in new ways. That could improve the student experience, but it could also end up dumbing down college, argues Gardner Campbell, director of professional development and innovative initiatives at Virginia Tech."

"In collaboration with Academic Partnerships, the University of Delaware's Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics has announced an innovative new online master of business administration (MBA) program. Academic Partnerships was selected to work with the Lerner College to deliver their faculty's curriculum to a growing number of students who want a top MBA delivered in a highly-flexible format. The program is expected to launch in spring 2013. "

Interestingly, the center found that students in hybrid classes - those that blended online instruction with a face-to-face component - performed as well academically as those in traditional classes. But hybrid courses are rare, and teaching professors how to manage them is costly and time-consuming. Colleges need to improve online courses before they deploy them widely. Moreover, schools with high numbers of students needing remedial education should consider requiring at least some students to demonstrate success in traditional classes before allowing them to take online courses.

Data mining hinges on one reality about life on the Web: what you do there leaves behind a trail of digital breadcrumbs. Companies scoop those up to tailor services, like the matchmaking of eHarmony or the book recommendations of Amazon. Now colleges, eager to get students out the door more efficiently, are awakening to the opportunities of so-called Big Data.

"Salt Lake Community College, in connection with the Utah System of Higher Education Consortium, is adopting Instructure Canvas as its new learning management system. Canvas will replace Blackboard Vista as the system for hosting online learning activities and course content. All courses currently hosted in Blackboard Vista will be moved to Instructure Canvas by July 1, 2012."

The 11-year-old online program accounts for just over a quarter of the enrollment at UMass's Isenberg School of Management, yet revenues from the program cover about 40 percent of the school's $25-million annual budget. And that's after UMass Online, the in-house marketing agency, as well as a few other arms of the university have taken their cuts. The business school's experience helps to illustrate the economics of distance education and the way one college with a marketable offering is using online education to help its bottom line.

"I found that producing video lectures spurred me to hone pedagogical presentation to a far higher level than I had in 10 years of teaching the class on campus," he said. The result was an online class that he describes as "significantly more rigorous and demanding than the on-campus version." It takes an immense amount of work to produce an adequate MOOC," The continuing participation of top faculty members in massive online courses, he said, will depend on whether their colleges are willing to let MOOCs distract them from their traditional duties. At that point, Mr. Owens said, campus officials will need to ask themselves whether they want to give that faculty time to online students, "99 percent of whom who are not at their universities."

Newco will combine Barnes & Noble's digital and college businesses, meaning the retailer's Nook operations and its Nook Study software for students and educators will be a part of the undertaking.

"several of the Kaleidoscope schools started using the rSmart Academic LMS, built on the Sakai open academic environment, which allows faculty to pull Kaleidoscope modules into their courses and add localizations. It also allows users to access the reservoir of openly licensed, shared content used in the Kaleidoscope courses. "This is the only LMS designed for the era of open sharing of content and a collaborative approach to curriculum design, so it could not be a more perfect match," says Thanos. "It allows for social connections and you can bring your academic content into your profile." "

Bookboon makes its digital textbooks available free to college students, has taken the approach of funding its work by including advertising within the pages of the books.

"Research finds overwhelming percentage of faculty feel students need texts to succeed… and they prefer them in print. "

The University of California, Irvine OpenCourseWare is now offering four new courses in Public Health, Physics, and Chemistry on iTunes U. iTunes U provides users with free public access to lectures, videos, books, podcasts, and courses from colleges and universities across the globe. Users can download the content to their iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch with the iTunes U app.

"In that model, the institution negotiates a deep discount off the list price of the textbook in order to have access to an e-text edition. In return for the discount, the university guarantees that every single student in the course will buy the e-text, which is charged like a lab fee."

""We were shocked to discover that among our majors, there is considerable resistance to this idea," Frechie said. "It began as our faculty thinking how can we keep pace with this new, emerging, younger and more technologically-literate population of students that we're working with today." The administration at Cabrini is also taking into consideration that there are many conditions to look at before making any move toward a digital transition. It is likely that some upperclassmen at Cabrini wouldn't get to experience a digital classroom experience."