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"The answer may be to combine the two. Anant Agarwal, who runs edX, proposes an alternative to the standard American four-year degree course. Students could spend an introductory year learning via a MOOC, followed by two years attending university and a final year starting part-time work while finishing their studies online. This sort of blended learning might prove more attractive than a four-year online degree. It could also draw in those who want to combine learning with work or child-rearing, freeing them from timetables assembled to suit academics."

"Discussion of the concept of Massive Open Online Courses as they evolved from the development of open online learning and evolved into a means of offering social and immersive learning online. The context was a discussion of officials from the University College of the North in manitoba, which is mandated to provide learning to numerous communities scattered across a large northern environment. For audio and vidio please see http://www.downes.ca/presentation/314 "

"Virtual worlds promise to deliver the best aspects of both real-world classrooms and online distance learning into a single platform. With tools that provide avatars that represent the educators and the students, voice and video capabilities, powerpoint and other collaborative whiteboard technologies and group and private messaging chat, educators are finding that the newest generation of virtual worlds can simplify the lecture and presentation process, allow students to ask/answers questions to their teacher or each other (without interrupting the lecture), socialize and learn in a very streamlined manner. All of this is done with the convenience and cost efficiency of distance learning."

"With the advent of the Internet and online learning, however, I eventually realized the need to expand my vision of learning communities beyond the class cohort. After all, if learning is essentially a phenomenon of network activity (think complex adaptive system), the ability to expand each learner's network capacity by introducing additional communities increases the her or his learning potential as well as the possibility for feedback into the network."

"One strategy for these colleges to avoid extinction is to diversify-to avoid a precarious reliance on residential students. And one way to do that is by adding online programs to the mix. The challenge for many small colleges is that they see online courses as at odds with their very identity. After all, these institutions embrace intimacy as central to their mission, with close, mentoring relationships between faculty and students, and deep, comradely connections among students-essential ingredients of highly engaged learning. For many, online fails to meet these crucial education ambitions. Instead, they reject virtual instruction as alienated learning, with isolated faculty and students coldly facing inert computer screens-not one another."

"While Education 2.0 allows for greater interaction between teacher and student, student and content/expert, and among students, Education 3.0 emphasizes a more connectivist approach to learning and teaching. These three "gogies" of effective online learning will help you get a clearer picture."

"The Live Lingua Project is part of our commitment to helping as many people as possible learn a foreign language, even if they can't afford our paid Skype language lessons. Part of the earnings of Live Lingua go to hosting, maintaining and constantly updating this area. This project is the internet's largest collection of free public domain language learning materials. It hosts thousands of free ebooks, audios and videos for over 130 languages from around the world. One of our missions is to make language learning accessible to everybody. Enjoy."

"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."

"The dramatic increase in online education, particularly Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), presents researchers, academics, administrators, learners, and policy makers with a range of questions as to the effectiveness of this format of teaching and learning. To date, the impact of MOOCs and emerging forms of digital learning has been largely disseminated through press releases and university reports, with only limited peer-reviewed research publication. The proliferation of MOOCs in higher education requires a concerted and urgent research agenda. The MOOC Research Initiative (MRI) will fill this research gap by evaluating MOOCs and how they impact teaching, learning, and education in general."

""The way do-it-yourself learning is depicted in her guide, it substitutes presentations, resources and materials from professors and books for presentations, resources and materials online through videos and online documents," he says. "There is no sense that it is do-it-yourself learning; it's just putting digital in place of traditional learning materials.""

This session will address online course design using the How People Learn framework for high level learning outcomes that involve collaboration, reflection, and problem solving.

"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."

"If online learning is to succeed as not only as a legitimate option for learning but as a respected platform within an institution, leadership has to build that respect through calculated risks and building multi-departmental relationships."

"Quality in online learning can be defined in many ways: quality of content, quality of design, quality of instructional delivery, and, ultimately, quality of outcomes. On the face of it, the organizing principles of MOOCs are at odds with widely observed best practices in online education, including those advocated by my organization, the Quality Matters Program. "

"They perceived they had overcome most obstacles, but that others at their institutions had not.   They did not believe that others were teaching courses that were on par with face-to-face classes in terms of quality. This is because of findings 2 and 3. The second finding was that the overwhelming majority did not feel support from their institutions when transitioning to online modalities, rather they indicated that experiential learning in the form of mentorship, learning by doing, and dialog with peers were most critical when overcoming the challenges. The third finding was that the majority of participants indicated the time required for preparation and intrusion of time on an ongoing basis during the course of an online class were significantly greater than time requirements of a face-to-face course."

"Discover how to transform your professional development and become a truly connected educator with user-generated learning! This book shows educators how to enhance their professional learning using practical tools, strategies, and online resources. With beginner-friendly, real-world examples and simple steps to get started, the author shows how to harness information from physical and virtual communities and become a lifelong learner in the digital age."

"We present the concept of quad-blogging, and its potential for facilitating and enhancing peer-to-peer learning in higher education, specifically in a massive open online course (MOOC) by increasing peer engagement, promoting the practice of blogging and fostering the formation of professional learning networks through social media."

The Open Learning Initiative offers online courses to anyone who wants to learn or teach. Our aim is to combine open, high-quality courses, continuous feedback, and research to improve learning and transform higher education.

Jonathan is also the director of the BadgeStack Project, the first system designed for badge-empowered learning and community-building, and the first to issue Mozilla Open Badges. We'll talk about the changing nature of professional development (PD) in particular and learning in general with the rise of online meeting technology, and how informal and non-traditional learning environments are impacting how we think about education.

"In a paper released on Monday, Christine Greenhow, an assistant professor of education at Michigan State University, argues that using informal social-media settings to carry on debates about science can help students refine their argumentative skills, increase their scientific literacy, and supplement learning in the classroom. Past studies have shown that informal settings, like conversations with friends, can facilitate learning, but according to Ms. Greenhow, very little has been studied about informal online contexts and social networks, like Facebook applications."