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"Of all the challenges facing online learning, I believe the need to train faculty properly to be the most difficult. Without adequate training in teaching methods, I don't see how learning technologies can be used effectively. We cannot afford to go on creating a whole parallel industry of instructional designers to hold the hands of faculty who can't teach effectively. Higher education is costing too much to have amateurs doing the teaching."

"Stanford faculty members are playing a leading role in exploring online education - and a number of them are now sharing experiences about their activities and what they are learning in a new series of videos available on the Stanford Online website."

A coalition of faculty groups has declared war against online learning, particularly massive open online courses (MOOCs), because it said it believes that the fast expansion of this form of education is being promulgated by corporations - specifically for-profit colleges and universities and education technology companies - at the expense of student education and public interest.

"The university's Arts & Sciences Council, the governing arm of the undergraduate faculty, voted down a proposal to join a consortium of top colleges offering for-credit online courses through 2U, a company that specializes in real-time, small-format online education."

"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."

"Many institutions have invested substantial resources in diverse initiatives to deliver distance learning and/or enhance campus-based learning with online resources. To these institutional efforts, faculty and students are now adding online tools and resources from beyond the campus. Higher education institutions are confronting the need to connect these various efforts to create more powerful and integrated learning experiences for all of their students. In this interview, Brian Hughes, Director of Social Media at the Teacher's College at Columbia University, discusses the issues surrounding social media integration."

TCC Hawaii invites faculty, support staff, librarians, counselors, student affairs professionals, students, administrators, and educational consultants to submit proposals for papers and general sessions.

Sound like a super on-line conference. I won't be submitting a proposal but would love to join-in. I would not, in this case, having a on-ground session.

The reason is that the top universities do not offer the best teaching and learning experiences. Instead, their faculty members are incentivized heavily to focus on research at the expense of teaching. If a professor seeking tenure at one of these institutions receives a teaching award, it is often said that that professor has just received the kiss of death for her tenure hopes. If students learn at these institutions, it's often not because the teaching is so good, but because the students are so talented that they can absorb anything thrown at them (and it's worth noting that just because a professor is entertaining, does not mean it's a good learning experience).

"Righting the ship will require borrowing a page from the community-college playbook, by adding employment-ready programs like nursing (as Holy Family has done) and computing to entice disaffected degree-seekers. Developing online and hybrid teaching methods might also raise revenue from adult learners. Mostly, self-preservation will require both professors and administrators to accept cost-cutting, which will hardly be easy. Even though St. Joe's ended the year with a $7 million surplus by embracing some of these measures, its administration became cannon fodder for faculty. But if more schools don't follow suit, it could spell closures. "For those college presidents unwilling to reboot," Hartman warns. "I've got one word for them: Detroit.""

Striking the right tone can be difficult. Professors aren't always natural performers, at least not on a par with professional actors. They also aren't famous, and Mr. Kimmel's setup works partly because viewers have a "parasocial" relationship to celebrities. That means they often know a great deal about famous people and even feel as if they're friends with them, even though there's a vast distance between them, said Dannagal G. Young, an associate professor of communication at the University of Delaware.

"Almost 25 years have passed since Chickering and Gamson offered seven principles for good instructional practices in undergraduate education. While the state of undergraduate education has evolved to some degree over that time, I think the seven principles still have a place in today's collegiate classroom. Originally written to communicate best practices for face-to-face instruction, the principles translate well to the online classroom and can help to provide guidance for those of us designing courses to be taught online."

...Just in time!! :)

"I think there is a HUGE disconnect with how things in higher education have always been, and how they need to change today to be relevant. Students don't want to be entertained, they want to be engaged… They need to experience flow. They need to be perplexed."

To find out if it's worth it for you, you'll need to try it yourself. And with the way things are going in many higher-education institutions, chances are if you don't choose this route, you'll be dragged into it anyway. Better to go willingly and get ahead of the curve, instead of kicking and screaming with the masses.

As a follow-up to "Come see me at EDUCAUSE," I wanted to share out some resources from my presentations as well as some resources that I gathered at the conference.