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By Oliver Dreon, PhD in Online Education section of Faculty Focus website, May 13 2013. Citing research titled Critical inquiry in a text-based environment...from The Internet and Higher Education (2000), the author have 5 steps to improve the community aspect of online classes, including introductions and a "common area" for students to meet for discussions that are off-topic.

Confirming much of what we've learned with our communities.

With a presence both on the internet and on TV (PBS), Teaching Channel calls itself a "showcase" of "inspiring and effective teaching practices in America's schools." The organization's mission "is to revolutionize how teachers learn, connect, and inspire each other to improve the outcomes for all K-12 students across America." Browse videos by subject, grade level or topic (all from the left-hand navigation). In addition, there is a blog. Users are encouraged to subscribe, and the Teachers space is also organized by subject and grade-level, as well as by roles. The site also provides a workspace.

This short video produced by McKinsey & Company, Jan 2013, broadly discusses their worldwide survey into the issue of education to employment. Some success stories are highlighted. Calls for widespread, large scale collaborations between employers, educators, students and parents.

By Jennifer Gonzalez from the Students section of The Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept 19 2012. The article highlights a study, "State High School Exit Exams: A Policy in Transition" from the Center on Education Policy at George Washington University. It looks at 8 states that require HS exit exams that measure college-readiness, either via Common Core Standards or other.

Website for the PBS Frontline documentary, originally aired September 2012. According the blog post, Introducing "Dropout Nation" (March 23 2012), this Frontline episode is part of the American Graduate: Let's Make It Happen campaign. The story follows a group of students in Houston Texas.

Scientists have discovered proof that the evolution of intelligence and larger brain sizes can be driven by cooperation and teamwork, shedding new light on the origins of what it means to be human. The study appears online in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B and was led by scientists at Trinity College Dublin: PhD student, Luke McNally and Assistant Professor Dr Andrew Jackson at the School of Natural Sciences in collaboration with Dr Sam Brown of the University of Edinburgh.

There really is a brain advantage to working collaboratively!

From this page, "The Peer Review of Teaching Project (PRTP) provides faculty with a structured and practical model that combines inquiry into the intellectual work of a course, careful investigation of student understanding and performance, and faculty reflection on teaching effectiveness." The site was developed as an "international repository for course portfolios written by faculty...."

"MindTap is a new personal learning experience that combines all your digital assets - readings, multimedia, activities, and assessments- into a singular learning path to improve student outcomes."

From the blog Connectivism by George Siemens, December 14 2011. Siemens argues the importance of artifacts to help students make sense of their experiences in MOOCs and other online learning experiences.

Thinking about the critical nature of artifacts to learners making sense of their e-experience makes me wonder how to encourage submission of such "sensemaking" artifacts to our Jams and e-communities.

Also, "The Official Social Network of the Global Education Conference." This social network, on ning, has over 9,000 members and 104 distinct groups. The Network offers the Global Education Conference, a collaborative, world-wide community initiative for students, educators and organizations at all levels. It takes place online (free) using the Blackboard Collaborate platform.

The National Education Research and Development Centers are funded through IES's NCER. The mission of the R&D Centers is to contribute to the production and dissemination of rigorous evidence and products that provide practical solutions to important education problems in the United States. The R&D Centers achieve this mission by developing, testing, and disseminating new approaches to improve teaching and learning, and ultimately, student achievement. Each of the Centers conducts a focused program of education research in its topic area. In addition, each Center works cooperatively with NCER, conducts supplemental research within its broad topic area, and provides national leadership in defining research and development directions within its topic area. Currently, there are 18 National R&D Centers.

"An LMS for Elite MOOCs? March 7, 2012 - 3:00am By Steve Kolowich Google artificial-intelligence guru Sebastian Thrun made a splash last month when he left Stanford University to start a company based on an A.I. course he made freely available last fall to tens of thousands of students on the Web. Now, two of Thrun's former Stanford colleagues who conducted similar experiments have spun off their own free online courses into a for-profit venture."

Though their primary audience is K-12, EduDemic offers social media/web 2.0 tools that are of use to students and teachers -- many applicable to the education world beyond K-12 as well.

By Garry Boulard in Community College Times, published May 4 2010. The article looks at the finding that, the more times a student takes a specific developmental math course, the less likely he or she is to pass it. Quotes Paul Nolting, learning specialist, enrollment services advisor, and author of Winning at Math: Your Guide to Learning Mathematics Through Successful Study Skills.

Published in Spectrum > Mobile Learning, Libraries, And Technologies, March 12, 2009. "MLE-Moodle is an out-of-the-box mobile Learning (mLearning) system, designed for mobile phones." With MCNC in particular, we've discussed how it might be helpful to be able to engage students/faculty/administrators in Polilogue via mobile phone in addition to computer.

Guy Raz interviews Anya Kamentz (reporter and author) on All Things Considered (NPR), March 13, 2010. According to this story, "about 10 percent of students in America are now enrolled at these online universities." Assume that they mean for-profit online universities, since that is the topic of the report.

Press release from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, March 18, 2010. "A new study of national college graduation data by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) reveals that far too many four-year colleges and universities graduate less than half of their Hispanic students."

By Andrew Bonamici, Steven G. Huter, and Dale Smith in EDUCAUSE Review, 45(2), March/April 2010, pp 10-11. Those of us in the "developed" world (North America, Europe, etc.) rely on cyberinfrastructure to gain access to the vast amounts of information available on the Web. But what about students and researchers in the rest of the world?

A program of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Statway focuses on helping community college students learn basic skills in statistics, data analysis, and quantitative reasoning as part of a one-year pathway. The ultimate goal of this pathway is preparation for college-level statistics. This home page to Statway also includes links to the project blog (called Pathways Connection) and to the project's mailing list. There are 19 community colleges affiliated with this project.