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Since SDSU's clicker standardization, clicker course enrollment has grown from under 3,000 in fall 2006 to over 12,500 in fall 2008. Learn about SDSU's collaborative approach to standardization and its innovative faculty support program, which combines a faculty community of practice developed through online and in-person peer interactions with hands-on workshops and one-on-one support. With its focus on improving student engagement and learning through effective practices with clickers, the impacts of this effort will be demonstrated through analysis of feedback data gathered each semester from thousands of students.

Educators have been searching for ways to modularize and share educational content since the inception of online learning. However, for reasons both cultural and technological, the academic community has been slow to accept past attempts to support learning through the use of reusable, stand-alone, digital assets. With the advent of Web 2.0 technologies, widgets, along with a new generation of web-based and mobile content aggregators, provide the key to successfully packaging and delivering web-based educational content. In this Webinar, Marino will share how the production of portable course content in widgets has opened his writing course, and Metros will discuss ways to work with information technology leaders and university administration to deploy and promote widgets as an innovative and supportable learning technology.

The rSmart Group, Inc. (rSmart) today announced they have been selected by Rhode Island Network for Educational Technology, Inc. (RINET) and its consortium membership made up of RI's K-12 schools and districts to implement and support the statewide initiative to make ePortfolios available to all K-12 students by 2008. RINET will support the rSmart OSP ePortfolio(TM) to improve RI districts' ability to monitor and measure student performance and progress while allowing individual students to demonstrate skills, knowledge and abilities.

Ball State's Emerging Media Initiative (EMI) is a planned $17.7 million investment in focusing the university's historic strengths in this area, accelerating benefits to the state of Indiana with media-savvy human capital. Our students will have access to innovative and entrepreneurial opportunities in emerging media across the curriculum. Our growing emphasis on new ideas, technology transfer, and commercialization will provide the support faculty need to bring their ideas to market.

Isaacson argued that online information shouldn't be exclusively ad supported, and that journalists should consider a small charge for articles, similar to the iTunes payment system for songs.

University of Delaware Information Technologies has announced that faculty and staff can now create "project" sites on Sakai@UD -- the UD-supported learning management system.

Open teaching is described as the facilitation of learning experiences that are open, transparent, collaborative, and social. Open teachers are advocates of a free and open knowledge society, and support their students in the critical consumption, production, connection, and synthesis of knowledge through the shared development of learning networks.

With growth of online course enrollments outpacing enrollments in traditional courses by 500%, institutions of higher education are experiencing significant changes in terms of long-term strategic planning. Along with providing for the infrastructure requirements associated with online course offerings, the issue of faculty preparedness and training is considered problematic from an administrative perspective.

Instructors' extra time and effort aren't being rewarded financially or professionally, and what's more, online education doesn't translate into better learning outcomes, said respondents in the faculty survey.