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This is a unique transition course designed to facilitate students' integration into the learning community of the University. The course enhances student's skills for academic success, develops understanding of university culture, increases understanding of self, and fosters educational engagement.

Today's web users are prolific creators of content, and they upload photographs, audio, and video to Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and many others by the billions. While the initial emphasis of social media was placed on producing and uploading media to these popular sharing sites, as the notion of social media has evolved, it has ultimately become more about the conversations started and relationships formed surrounding this media. In this mini-course, educators will gain a better understanding of how social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, can be leveraged for teaching and learning. Participants will specifically learn how to integrate social media into STEM curriculum to: (1) engage students in insightful discussions, (2) build thriving STEM-focused online communities, and (3) help students discover new areas for informal STEM learning.

Several institutions have redesigned  traditional learning spaces to better  realize the potential of active,  experiential learning. We compare  student performance in traditional  and active learning classrooms  in a large, introductory biology  course using the same syllabus,  course goals, exams, and instructor

"When the Legislature convenes in January, my intent is to work with the governor and Legislature to appropriately update the statute to meet modern-day circumstances," he wrote. "Until that time, I see no reason for our office to require registration of free, not-for-credit offerings." But that may not be the end of the matter. If, down the road, Coursera starts charging for the courses or students can earn credit or certificates for them, the state might reassess its approach, he said.

"If you have an exercise bike in the back room, you could be the small selection of people that use it everyday to get fit. But then again, you could be one of many more who bought it in the hope of regular practice but were unable to make it part of your routine. The MOOC or Massive Open Online Course, which has come to prominence this year, often has much the same effect. Students may enrol in the online free courses from prestigious universities in their tens of thousands, but overwhelmingly they bomb out with attrition rates up to 80-90%."

"Coursera has been informed by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education that under Minnesota Statutes (136A.61 to 136A.71), a university cannot offer online courses to Minnesota residents unless the university has received authorization from the State of Minnesota to do so. If you are a resident of Minnesota, you agree that either (1) you will not take courses on Coursera, or (2) for each class that you take, the majority of work you do for the class will be done from outside the State of Minnesota."

"Over 49,000 students registered for the class, over 16,000 attended the first week's lecture, and over 4,900 students earned a certificate at the end of the 10-week course. It would take 32 years of teaching our SI 502 foundations course on networked computing to interact with that many students."

This site list over fifty Free Course Management Tools for e-Learning.

"The large majority of faculty who have taught online courses (79%) say the experience has helped them develop skills and practices that have improved their teaching in the classroom as well as online."

"OCW Educator helps teachers search the vast library of OCW resources to find instructional approaches and teaching materials. Explore This Course at MIT pages to discover how MIT instructors teach their courses, and freely select and adapt their explanations, examples, and simulations to help concepts come to life in your own classroom."

The massive open online course (MOOC) provider edX took a step toward boosting the credibility of its "graduates" on Thursday, announcing a partnership with Pearson's testing centers that would allow students in edX's free, online courses to take proctored exams.

"I had expected that people signing up for a course like this, a non-traditional course where we work mostly on our own or together with other students in the class, would be students who embrace that kind of learning, students who feel a sense of independence and self-determination as learners. What I've learned, though, is that this is not the case for at least some students in the class, who are very much expecting the teacher to function as the voice of absolute authority in the class."

Isn't that the nature of humans? We want freedom for creativity and original thinking, but ultimately it makes us uncomfortable when people actually do achieve it; ultimately it seems that humans instinctively cling to rules, tradition and order.

Good point Tammy. Still, the "grading" paradigm is a strong one. We should expect today's students to start being a little more autonomous in their learning process.

"The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation wants to find out whether the massive open online courses that have proved so popular in advanced and often highly technical fields offer the same promise for remedial and introductory courses."

Coursera continued its ambitious expansion in the growing market for MOOC support today, announcing accords with 16 new universities to help them produce massive open online courses - more than doubling the company's number of institutional partners and pushing its course count near 200.

Online enrollment growth, while still substantial, is slowing. The 2013 Survey of Online Learning conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group reveals the number of higher education students taking at least one online course has now surpassed 7.1 million. The 6.1 percent growth rate, although the lowest for a decade, still represents over 400,000 additional students taking at least one online course.

"I'm a finalist for teaching a Coursera MOOC next year on "The History and Future of Higher Education."  Naturally, I am doing this because I want to improve the future of higher education and add as much innovation as possible.  I'm interested in ways that an online  course with a relatively static form could become a platform for innovation.    And I will use this hastac.org site as a testbed for analysis of the teaching and learning as it is happening and as a place of reflection on the process and possibilities."

"The key to effective socialized course design lies in understanding and configuring the LMS as not (just) a content delivery mechanism for distributing grades and PDFs but also as a potentially valuable niche online networking platform that can support a series of socialized assignments."

"Google has launched its own Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to teach the general public how to understand surveys, research, and data. Called "Making Sense of Data" and running from March 18 to April 4, the course will be open to the public and, like most MOOCs, will be taught through a series of video lectures, interactive projects, and the support of community TAs."

"Learning management systems have become the primary delivery platform in most higher education systems for course-related activities such as lecture presentations, readings and assignments, discussions, and quizzes. Until a few years ago, access for learners and instructors with disabilities was either poorly supported or not considered at all in many popular tools. Due to lack of, or limited, accessibility in learning management systems, students were not able to fully or independently participate in key course activities."

Thank you!!

This OCL4Ed micro Open Online Course (mOOC) will be facilitated by the UNESCO OER Chair network in support of capability development for the UNESCO 2012 Paris OER Declaration (See video from Abel Caine, Programme Specialist for OER at UNESCO.). The OCL4Ed 13.09 course is sponsored by the OER Foundation and the Commonwealth of Learning.