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This lack of transparency from accrediting commissions is a relic of a bygone era when higher education was relatively stable and accrediting decisions mostly affected the specific institution under review. But given the changes that the higher education industry is facing and going through, these policies are damaging to those institutions who are trying out new models and need to know where the boundaries are drawn. Accrediting commissions play an important role in the governance of our higher education industry, in particular by providing a method for quality assurance. By operating in such an opaque manner, however, the agencies are effectively acting as a barrier to change and stifling innovation.

"THE NEW DEGREE FOR THE NEW WORLD. DEGREED IS A FREE SERVICE THAT SCORES AND VALIDATES YOUR LIFELONG EDUCATION FROM BOTH ACCREDITED (I.E. HARVARD) AND NON-ACCREDITED (I.E. ITUNESU, LYNDA.COM, KHAN ACADEMY, ETC.) SOURCES."

"Open Badges enable you to connect different types of learning to each other. The whole point of connected learning by definition -- by the name itself -- is to find a way to connect things. To do that, we need something that will carry that information across sectors. In the connected learning vision, I see badges as the connectors between different spheres. Badges play the role of a currency where learning can be captured, recognized, and then communicated across those lines."

StraighterLine has been recognized as a revolutionary, innovative force in higher education by major news organizations and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Fast Company named StraighterLine one of the 10 Most Innovative Companies in Education , and our students have reported that our college credits have been accepted by hundreds of accredited colleges and universities nationwide.

These are just a glimpse of some of the most recent (within the last two years) updates to distance education policy standards set forth by regional and national accrediting organizations in the U.S. And as many institutions begin implementing online programs, it's never been a more critical time for administrators and leaders to become well-acquainted with the hallmarks of quality required for both new, and currently in-place, distance-ed programs.

""Where's the beef?" was the famous campaign slogan from the 1984 Presidential campaign. For two years, MOOC watchers have been asking the same question, as hundreds of thousands of students participated in free online courses that delivered knowledge but no certification of any real value. The Georgia Institute of Technology recently changed all that: Its May 14 announcement that the school would offer a fully accredited Online Masters of Science in Computer Science (OMS CS) for less than $7,000 suddenly brought the abstract potential of MOOCs into stark relief."

" You can throw all kinds of software and data at a problem, but if faculty aren't brought in early to the process in a collaborative way, effective change is unlikely to happen. Unfortunately, demands from outside actors like legislators and federal bureaucrats can often lead to friction between groups on campuses and thwart their ability to collaborate. I found that external mandates and the need to focus on compliance issues related to accreditation have stymied innovation."

"JetBlue (NASDAQ: JBLU) today announced the launch of JetBlue Scholars, an innovative new program that offers crewmembers an opportunity to earn a fully accredited college degree from Thomas Edison State University, with JetBlue covering most of the cost."

College credit for what you already know

"This page is intended as a portal for information on all of Saylor's various efforts to link free Saylor.org courses to college credit. A running list of courses that are aligned to free or affordable credit options can be viewed here."

The Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) links learning and work. CAEL is a nonprofit that works at all levels within the higher education, public, and private sectors to make it easier for people to get the education and training they need.

"instructors and a large share of academic technology administrators say the efforts are mainly designed to satisfy accreditors and politicians -- not to increase degree completion rates."

""Tiffin University must disengage from our business relationship with Altius," Paul Marion, Tiffin's president, confirmed in an interview."

"Software Secure, Inc. and the International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI) have partnered to offer the Trusted Seal Program™, a set of standardized criteria with which the integrity practices of online courses can be evaluated. An industry first, the program is endorsed by leaders in online academic integrity solutions and best practices."

"Writing learning outcomes is very difficult for faculty who were never trained to think about their teaching in such terms.  We are great at describing what content our course will cover; we are pretty good at knowing that we expect our students to master a certain amount of content or skill set by the end of the semester.  We are terrible at framing our expectations for student learning in terms of learning outcomes, with all of our learning activities in the course aligned to those learning outcomes.  We are even worse at measuring learning outcomes.  We conflate grades with learning outcomes on the regular."

Plenty of smart observers, however, say that the problem with Altius was its overreach, and that the system worked.