itcss-instructionalsupport

"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. "

"Recently we added a Crocodoc integration to SpeedGrader in Canvas.  We think this will make a good thing better.  Now, when students submit digital files for grading (in Word, PowerPoint or PDF formats), instructors are able to annotate the files and grade the submissions right on the screen."

Interesting conclusion on his research: Presenting students' common misconceptions in a video alongside the scientific concepts has been shown to increase learning by increasing the amount of mental effort students expend while watching it.

"Regardless of any program the university uses, there will be technical issues that follow. No application is perfect. However, some work better than others. The university should test out different applications and get student and professor feedback before committing. This way, more people can be happy with the university's decision and have a more positive experience using the technology. Online platforms for universities are used to make grading and submitting assignments more convenient. They should not be a stressful experience. "

"More than 30 professors and 1,200 students are test-driving an alternative to Sakai, called Canvas, this semester, according to Internet Technology project leader Mathieu Plourde. The university has used Sakai for more than four years, but Plourde said he thinks the program shows its age. "

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.

Makes sense what they list as the 10 services. I like #9, pedagogical support: As more and more faculty become involved in online or blended courses, the need for support has grown in lockstep

Interesting article

"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."

Interesting summary -