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"WGU Academy courses will be delivered in an online, competency-based format similar to the WGU learning model. Students will enroll in customized programs of two or more college-level courses that typically include a writing course and one or more courses in math, general education, or introductory-level classes focused on desired degree paths. In addition to college-level courses, WGU Academy offers the Program for Academic and Career Advancement (PACA). Modeled on a nationally recognized social and emotional learning course used by WGU for several years, the course provides group sessions, peer interaction, and one-to-one coaching to build confidence and college persistence."

"What do students want in the learning activities for their online STEM courses? They'd prefer more real-life problems to solve and instructional resources such as simulations, case studies, videos and demonstrations. They'd also like the chance to meet and collaborate with other students as well as teaching assistants online. Finally, they'd appreciate clear and consistent information from instructors about instructions, assignments, assessments, due dates, course pages and office hours. What do students currently get? The most common course activities are the completion of major projects or assignments, reading, visiting websites, taking quizzes or exams, and viewing slideshows. The most interaction they report experiencing comes from reading course news and announcements and receiving e-mails from the instructor."

"Key findings from the report include: When publishers bundle a textbook with an access code, it eliminates most opportunities for students to cut costs with the used book market. Of the access code bundles in our sample, forty-five percent-nearly half-were unavailable from any other source we could find except the campus bookstore. This eliminated student's ability to shop around and meant that they were forced to pay full price for these materials. For the classes using bundles, students would likely be stuck paying full price, whereas for the classes using a textbook only, students could cut costs up to fifty-eight percent by buying used online. Schools that have invested in open educational resources (OER) generated significant savings for their students. OER are educational materials that can be downloaded or accessed for free online while carrying many other benefits for students and professors. For example, in Massachusetts, Greenfield Community College's use of OER in three of the six courses in our study meant that students there could spend as little as $31 per course on materials, compared to a national average of $153 per course. Switching the ten introductory classes in our study to OER nationwide would save students $1.5 billion per year in course materials costs."

"Students who use OER find them to be accessible, relevant, and engaging. Over 60 percent of students reported that the overall quality of their learning experience in an OER course was higher in comparison to a typical, non- OER course. Though creating OER courses and degrees is time consuming, instructors in several colleges said they had made changes in instruction as a result of working with OER materials. Though few instructors made changes to their pedagogical practices specific to OER, use of these materials allowed them to align materials better with their learning goals. Instructors already using student-centered and hands-on learning strategies said that the OER materials helped what they were already doing. Several instructors also reported that students were more engaged with OER materials compared to textbooks, because they are better tailored to good pedagogy, reading materials are more relevant and interesting, and students can be more involved in the construction of the learning experience."

"Understanding how time "works" in online courses can be a challenge for instructors: How do I determine the total time on task expected of students? How can I calculate the time students will need to complete course work? What should students be doing to accomplish course goals and learning outcomes? What should I be doing with my time as online instructor?  "

"David-John Palmer, an instructor at FIU and associate director of educational technology at FIU Online, has spearheaded the recent AI initiative in his own Introduction to Information Systems course in partnership with Cognii Inc., a leading provider of AI-based educational technologies. His course, offered through the College of Business, is the first online FIU course to feature AI in instructional design."

"In-depth ideas about the behavior of students in the course and predicts future trends. Research-based on algorithms to calculate measures; for instance, entries to the platform, staying in a course, social connections, forum discussions, linguistic analysis of the use of the words that students say, and comparative analysis of courses. Ideas about the problems of the course so that instructors they can take immediate action."

"The Copyright Crash Course was created by Georgia Harper and is currently maintained by UT Libraries. The Course is arranged into several sections that allow users to explore certain areas of copyright law individually or as a group. The Course was originally created with faculty in mind, but can be used by anyone who is interested in understanding and managing their copyrights."

"Given these limitations, the rubrics do provide great value. Ultimately, these rubrics represent the current thinking about improving the quality of online courses. Some of the rubrics have evolved over twenty years and will continue to do so. The rubrics' strengths manifest at different levels-for individual instructors, a rubric acts as a course design guide; for institutions and systems, a rubric creates a common vocabulary, an aspirational worldview, a mechanism for consistency and accountability, and the basis for a social infrastructure that runs parallel to the technological infrastructure."

"With OpenNow, Cengage is sending its clearest signal yet that it is serious about OER. Taking OER materials freely available online from sites such as OpenStax, Cengage has added its own assessments, content and technology to the materials, which will be delivered through an "intuitive, outcomes-based" platform that can be integrated into students' learning management systems. Focusing on general education, OpenNow has launched with courses in psychology, American government and sociology, and more courses in science, economics and the humanities will be available this fall."

"The learning experience that you offer your students may still be unknown, unintentional, or misunderstood; nevertheless, you are offering an experience. An e-learning course with 77 content tabs, for example, may evoke a feeling among your students of being overwhelmed, just as presenting the plagiarism policy as the homepage of your course (you know who you are) may elicit a rigid first impression. This is where we can learn from the curators of the theme park experience-by meticulously curating a course to include enough "thrill" for our accelerated student and enough "support" for our remedial student, while still leaving enough room for every student's self-expression."

"Quite expectedly, faculty comments included concerns about creating electronic correspondence courses, lowering course quality, and otherwise silencing the faculty voice in the teaching and learning process. Indeed, success with this new mode would depend on acknowledging the legitimacy of that fear and creating a process to encourage, respect, and retain the faculty voice. Our method of achieving this is anchored by five essential elements and will be applied to more than 250 courses, including general education, in nearly 20 academic programs."

"Lessons learned from campuses nationwide have informed an approach to compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act during the process of online course design. Providing multiple ways for students to gain knowledge, demonstrate knowledge, and interact goes a long way toward making a course accessible to all students, including those with disabilities. Accessibility efforts benefit not only students with disabilities but also students who are English language learners and those working in noisy or quiet environments."

"some users will be asked to pay a support fee, "from $9 up to some portion of the certification cost," said Medros. The price of the support fee "will be aligned to the value and experience" that a course gives to a learner, said Medros, suggesting that the best courses will also be the most expensive."

""The study indicates that, based on two years of implementation across scores of colleges, OER can be an important tool in helping more students-and particularly low-income and underrepresented students-afford college, engage actively in their learning, persist in their studies, and ultimately complete," says Dr. Karen A Stout, ATD president. "Data show that even using the most conservative estimates, cost savings are significant and that OER content plays a role in helping strengthen instruction and learning across not just a few courses but entire degree pathways.""

"The study looked at performance in an introductory biology course and found that women performed worse on average than did men in tests in the course. But the study also found that the women outperformed men in laboratory work and written assignments, suggesting that the tests may not be capturing the knowledge of women as well as other forms of assessment."

"However, it is individual faculty, not CAOs and CIOs, who make the decisions about course materials - and by extension, the use of OER materials in their classes.   And there is evidence that faculty are far less enthusiastic about OER than CAOs and CIOs. Drawing again from the 2018 Campus Computing Survey, just two-fifths (38 percent) of CIOs report that faculty at their institution "believe that the quality of OER course materials is about the same as comparable commercial products.""

""In other words," the researchers wrote, "students who have positive attitudes about multitasking and prefer to multitask appear to better control this academically disadvantageous behavior in face-to-face courses." They attribute the students' "control" heavily to what Lepp called the "norms of the classroom" -- essentially, pressure from peers or the instructor not to multitask."

Created by William Horton (2006), this model is most useful in 1) providing a lens for instructors to be intentional about the variety and balance of activities provided in a course, and 2) building scaffolded activity sequences that require progressively higher order thinking skills.