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"Community of Inquiry framework: 10 years old and going strong (Classic) Marti Cleveland-Innes, Athabasca University Phil Ice, American Public University System Peter Shea, University of Albany, SUNY Karen Swan, University of Illinois-Springfield"

Does class size matter? http://www.magnapubs.com/newsletter/distance-education-report/270/Does-Class-Size-Matter-13523-1.html This article originally appeared in Distance Education Report. I've been the director of online education at my institution since 2007. One question I've been asked many times over the years is "What is the optimal number of students to have in an online class?" My usual response is to pretend I didn't hear the question and walk away as quickly as possible. Well, that's not totally true. But as you can imagine, this is not an easy question to answer, as there are many variables that come into play--the topic of the class, the overall course design, the academic rank of students in the class, the experience of the instructor teaching the class, etc. I've had many interesting discussions with students, staff and administrators over the years about enrollments in online courses. When I first started teaching online, my courses would fill almost immediately, sometimes within minutes. Inevitably, students would contact me and request an override for the course - not just one or two students, but dozens upon dozens of students. They were usually surprised when I said no. These frustrated students would often reply with a comment such as, "But it's an online class, so you can take unlimited numbers of students and it won't be any additional work for you." Surprisingly, I've heard this kind of comment from some faculty, staff and administrators as well. I usually view these interactions as opportunities to offer a bit of education about online learning. So I might say, for example, that if I had seven graded assignments in my online course, and 25 students, I would end up grading 175 assignments--with the emphasis on "I." However, if I doubled the number of students in my class and graded seven assignments for 50 students, that would be 350 assignments to grade. There were also 22 quizzes, two exams and multiple

We are a social entrepeneurship company that partners with the top universities in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. We envision a future where the top universities are educating not only thousands of students, but millions. Our technology enables the best professors to teach tens or hundreds of thousands of students.

Alternate universe where the last 20 years in #onlinelearning never happened - from #MOOC to #SPOC http://t.co/Lz6Or4mn5e via @ABDickie

In order to better understand faculty attitudes and practices regarding usage of library-specific tools and roles in a university learning management system, log data for a period of three semesters was analyzed. Academic departments with highest rates of usage were identified, and faculty users and non-users within those departments were surveyed regarding their perceptions of and experience with the library tools. Librarians who use the tools were also surveyed to compare their perceptions of faculty tool and role use. While faculty survey respondents showed high levels of positive perceptions of librarians, they also exhibited low awareness of the library tools and little understanding of their use. Recommendations for encouraging wider adoption and effective usage are discussed.

Colleges and universities are looking to adopt the iPad as a collaborative tool, a standardized mobile device to integrate into curriculums, and, in some cases, even a cost-saving device.

"The deal represents one of the first instances of a third-party institution buying permission to incorporate a MOOC into its curriculum"

Cool. Check out our #nglc project: SUNY Blend http://t.co/LMLlRSKx

The latest online course venture, from Stanford professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, aims to "flip" university lecture halls, leaving more time for "meaningful and engaging interaction between faculty and students," while freely sharing the prepared digital lessons with the world. Currently there are 16 courses slated for this winter and spring. Among them is a class on entrepreneurship by lean-startup demigod, Steve Blank. 

"Given your critique of "online education," I find it ironic that learning designers and others who work day-in, day-out on online (and blended) learning spend much of our time saying similar things to our faculty partners and university stakeholders as you so eloquently articulated in the above quotes. The error that you make, and it is a fundamental error, is that you confuse what is going on at Stanford, Yale, Harvard, M.I.T. with edX and Coursera, with traditional online learning. You write as if you are critiquing online classes, but what you are really taking issue with are the new crop of massively open online courses (MOOCs). This error is not merely semantic. Confusing online learning with MOOCs disallows any meaningful analysis of the challenges and benefits of either format. Conflating online learning with MOOCs also closes the possibility of any substantive discussion of how institutions of higher education are responding to challenges around access, cost and quality. And perhaps most troubling, by conflating online learning with MOOCs you are mischaracterizing and devaluing the hard work of your fellow educators to bring the active learning principles, the principles that you yourself espouse, to new teaching modalities."