Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

"Now that I've completed this first course, I feel strongly that Edmundson and other critics - however well-intended - are simply misguided about online learning being too impersonal. I got to know my group of 30 online students as well as, or better, than any undergraduate course I've taught in recent years. (I should add that teaching evaluations confirmed my sense that the class achieved its goals)."

"one study found that regular online testing enhanced student learning (Angus & Watson, 2009). Another study found no differences in student performance between online and face-to-face testing (Karkee, Kim, & Fatica, 2010). There's really no right answer to be found in the research literature. All of us need to make our own plans about how and when to measure student learning. Hopefully, these plans are based in sound educational principles and result in effective assessment practices. Read on to learn more about some of the issues related to online testing."

"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."

"The important point to remember is that the fair use guidelines that are used to determine what materials can be used on the local campus do not automatically transfer to online courses offered to the consumer public. To many faculty, these rules seem bureaucratic, but librarians can help navigate the terrain that faculty are not accustomed to dealing with. And, by becoming comfortable with copyright provisions themselves, faculty can ensure that their online students access the same level of resources that on-campus students enjoy."

"Instructors of online courses must create a learning environment that differentiates student discussion. But specifically, teachers must incorporate use of student blogging in an online course structure."

Today California (CA) Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (author of the CA open textbook legislation) announced that SB 520 will be amended to provide open, online college courses for credit. In short, the bill will allow CA students, enrolled in CA public colleges and universities, to take online courses from a pool of 50 high enrollment, introductory courses, offered by 3rd parties, in which CA students cannot currently gain access from their public CA university or community college.

University professors need to accept the fact that like most fields, education is constantly evolving due to technological advancements. The traditional classroom is changing, but the refusal of many tenured professors to change with it hinders the efficiency of education to improve. The university not only needs to provide incentives for professors to utilize these online resources, but also mandate that they at least be offered. In the next few years, it is unavoidable that some people will prefer and continue to use traditional methods of education. Yet, at the bare minimum, cheaper alternatives to over-priced textbooks and online resources need to be offered and available to university students.

IN LITTLE MORE THAN A YEAR, discussion of the role of online learning in higher education has undergone a qualitative shift. With the launch of for-profit educational start-ups such as Coursera, Udacity, and the MIT and Harvard-founded nonprofit platform edX, Massively Open online Courses (MOOCs) have moved from obscure experiment to major initiative. MOOCs are online classes, generally composed of short lectures, that allow for open, often free enrollments (thousands can easily enroll in a single course), assessing students through periodic quizzes and discussion forums.

"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."

"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 "

"MOOCs are characterized by their openness, enabling anyone across the world with an Internet connection to participate.  As a result, most MOOCs have thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of participants. An online course with potentially tens of thousands of students is a very different teaching environment than face-to-face courses or even "traditional" online courses.  Teaching strategies practiced in other teaching contexts won't necessarily translate well to this context. Indeed, the sets of choices regarding learning objectives, content presentation, assessment, and instructor-to-student and student-to-student interaction are still being developed in this emergent teaching environment."

"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."

"Responding to calls for additional resources to support postsecondary instructors, many vendors and organizations now offer online educational development resources. The ultimate goal is to improve instruction and student learning, but to get there, higher education institutions must examine and evaluate these tools, as well as consider the specific needs of diverse campus stakeholders. After research and discussion, the Professional and Organizational Development Network developed eight principles to guide institutions as they explore and select online educational development resources for their campus communities."

Even though all classes will be held online, first-year students must live in a residence hall in San Francisco and take classes together in real time, deviating from the "anywhere, anytime" model prevalent in online education.

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.

"From email to social media, there comes a time in everyone's life when we need to sit up and face the truth about our online selves. And the best way to make us all see the light is with graphs. Danish artists Mikael Wulff and Anders Morgenthaler created the series "Truth Facts" on their comedy website Kind of Normal. The humorously honest graphs show the hard truths of everyday life - especially online life."

"This free online course will explain how you can study online without putting the rest of your life on hold."

""Privacy in this online environment is a good placeholder for many other areas of law, areas that have either an international dimension or some cross-disciplinary component," he says. "I think that the exploratory, almost playful approach that we apply in Comparative online Privacy is helpful for other conversations, too.""

As you beginning to explore online delivery of your courses, a natural question is how do you translate what you currently are doing as you transition your course online?

"Beyond traditional social media platforms, learning management systems that have a social media component, including Blackboard and Moodle, are also common in online learning, says Bethany Smith, director of the media and education technology resource center at North Carolina State University's College of Education. "We mimic kind of what Facebook is doing, but in a learning environment," Smith says."