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"Presented on May 8, 2019 by Dr. Janette Isaacson and Grant Kirby form Oregon Institute of Technology It all started with the question, "Are we really sure students are learning what we think they are learning?" Hear how faculty at Oregon Institute of Technology have used Quality Matters Standards and Coursetune mapping software to strengthen course design and alignment across the courses they teach. Dr. Janette Isaacson and Grant Kirby have implemented a student-centered instructional design model that begins with three key components: QM is the foundation of quality metrics; Coursetune provides scalable modeling for alignment mapping; real-time student feedback provides an empirical measurement for quality success."

"We were happy to find no difference in the effectiveness, performance ratings,  or promotions for individuals and teams whose work requires collaboration with colleagues around the world versus Googlers who spend most of their day to day working with colleagues in the same office. Well-being standards were uniform across the board as well; Googlers or teams who work virtually find ways to prioritize a steady work-life balance by prioritizing important rituals like a healthy night's sleep and exercise just as non-distributed team members do. At the same time, we did hear from Googlers that working with colleagues across the globe can make it more difficult to establish connections-in many senses of the word. Coordinating schedules across time zones and booking a conference room for a video chat takes more logistical brain power than dropping by a coworkers desk for a meeting over coffee. The technology itself can also be limiting- glitchy video or faulty sound makes impromptu conversations that help teammates get to know, and trust each other, seem like more trouble than they're worth."

"Our mission is to create a trusted, distributed, and shared infrastructure that will become the standard for issuing, storing, displaying, and verifying academic credentials, digitally."

"What Anbar has in mind is something he calls "active OER." That's taking the standard digital textbook and expanding it with the addition of digital resources, including simulations that are both interactive and adaptive. "The learner doesn't just move something around in the simulation but actually gets prompting feedback that guides them to success," he explained. That's where Smart Sparrow comes in: The company produces aero, a learning platform that allows the instructor to pull together lessons from a set of templates that can include text, tests, assessments, virtual labs and field trips, and other digital components. For the purposes of the consortium, those elements would be pulled from OER materials."

"Accessibility policies frame standards and expectations for how a college or university's programs, services, and facilities serve the needs of people with disabilities. Some policies are aspirational in nature and relatively short on specific mandates, while others are much more prescriptive in stating standards, rules for compliance, and sanctions for behaviors that fall short. Accessibility policies constitute a statement of values that the institutional community subscribes to, and they serve as guidelines for how the institution intends to ensure the equitable treatment of all members of the campus community."

"Conflicts arise, however, because accessibility accommodations can sometimes complicate efforts to quickly disseminate flexible learning options to a broad student population. In some cases, institutions are responding to such conflicts in extreme ways. For example, one institution simply took down large volumes of online content that had been provided in the spirit of UDL but that did not meet accessibility standards; in other instances, colleges and universities that feel overwhelmed by a conflict have done nothing at all to address it."

"According to the OSU Web Accessibility Policy (PDF), all content interfaces to be used by Ohio State University faculty/staff, program participants, or other university constituencies are required to be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), as amended. This page provides elaboration and guidelines to help OSU developers and purchasing agents meet the Web Accessibility Policy."

"OpenSalt is a powerful tool for creating and managing competency frameworks. PCG provides a hosted service for managing and providing CASE API interfaces and support and maitenance for the platfrom. OpenSALT is also an Open Srouce platfrom you can run yourself or contrbute to. You can learn more about open salt "

"Given our current, collective limitations, what are we to do? Instead of searching out alternative platforms, we might partner with LMSs to reconceptualize the LMS as a platform. In many ways, the LMS is already beginning to evolve in this direction. Canvas has their App Store, which is a more individual faculty-driven model. John Baker of D2L recently utilized the oft-referenced Lego analogy. LMSs in general are moving away from individual building blocks or custom integrations towards open standards like LTI, but the robustness of that interoperability is still inconsistent across what version of LTI their product meets."

"This Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (Framework) grows out of a belief that information literacy as an educational reform movement will realize its potential only through a richer, more complex set of core ideas. During the fifteen years since the publication of the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education,1 academic librarians and their partners in higher education associations have developed learning outcomes, tools, and resources that some institutions have deployed to infuse information literacy concepts and skills into their curricula. However, the rapidly changing higher education environment, along with the dynamic and often uncertain information ecosystem in which all of us work and live, require new attention to be focused on foundational ideas about that ecosystem. Students have a greater role and responsibility in creating new knowledge, in understanding the contours and the changing dynamics of the world of information, and in using information, data, and scholarship ethically. Teaching faculty have a greater responsibility in designing curricula and assignments that foster enhanced engagement with the core ideas about information and scholarship within their disciplines. Librarians have a greater responsibility in identifying core ideas within their own knowledge domain that can extend learning for students, in creating a new cohesive curriculum for information literacy, and in collaborating more extensively with faculty."

"For the fiscal year 2017 budget, the U.S. Department of Education (Education) estimates that all federally issued Direct Loans in Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plans will have government costs of $74 billion, higher than previous budget estimates. IDR plans are designed to help ease student debt burden by setting loan payments as a percentage of borrower income, extending repayment periods from the standard 10 years to up to 25 years, and forgiving remaining balances at the end of that period. While actual costs cannot be known until borrowers repay their loans, GAO found that current IDR plan budget estimates are more than double what was originally expected for loans made in fiscal years 2009 through 2016 (the only years for which original estimates are available). This growth is largely due to the rising volume of loans in IDR plans."

"Along the way, we should encourage learners who have been raised on a diet of compliance and social control to take a critical mind-set. But that doesn't mean that we should teach them that all arguments are equally valid and that the truth is whatever you decide it is at that moment. Just as we learn to raise our standards when analyzing the claims of others, we also need to apply high standards to our own thinking. That's why critical thinking can be an important part of self-improvement. It can help you get what you want, but it can also help you decide what you want to want."

"Now let's imagine a university in the 21st century decides, as a matter of choice, to make all of its students attend classes in these sorts of learning spaces. But more than this, they decide to black out all of the windows so that no one can see in and they say that there can be no displays of student work within the room. They provide a standard overhead projector in each room and they insist that teaching consists of a 5 minute introductory presentation from the teacher followed by a question, followed by another 5 minute video and so on. Students are only allowed to talk to each other if they go to a corner of the room that has been walled off from everything else. This method of teaching will be the same for every degree program so the artists and sculptors will use a space like this as well as the engineers and physicists. Learning about modern dance and nursing will all occur in these spaces."

"hat we're witnessing is the changing role of faculty in Competency Based Education - I (and many ed. reformers) believe instructors SHOULD function more like tutors, coaches, and mentors than their roles have traditionally called for! The faculty role has been historically constructed as a "fount of knowledge", sage on a stage, the smartest person in the room - this was a historic necessity during the long era of information scarcity that we are transitioning away from. Now that information is abundant, infinitely reproducible, instantly accessible, subject matter experts need to share space with faculty who specialize in the interpersonal nuances of teaching students. In fact "regular and substantive interaction" is scarce in higher education, unless you count lecturing and note-taking as "interaction". Do you? Is this the standard that OIG is measuring WGU against?"

"A POLITICO investigation has found that Pearson stands to make tens of millions in taxpayer dollars and cuts in student tuition from deals arranged without competitive bids in states from Florida to Texas. The review also found Pearson's contracts set forth specific performance targets - but don't penalize the company when it fails to meet those standards. And in the higher ed realm, the contracts give Pearson extensive access to personal student data, with few constraints on how it is used."

Some authors will always prefer CC BY-NC-SA or CC BY-NC-ND, for a myriad of different reasons, and we support their choice to do so - but CC BY is widely considered to be the gold standard for open access, as it allows for maximum re-use and discovery. It is also preferred by many funders, and we continue to be compliant with all open access funder mandates.

"Google Forms makes peer evaluation possible and simple. I collect the names and email addresses of both students: evaluator and evaluatee. I use the "grid" style question type to allow peers to rank each criteria on a scale of 1-5 against the rubric. I can include a URL to the grading criteria in the help text, so all students have access to the standard assessment guide. "

The education division of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) has released the first report in a new series of Behind the Data publications. According to Testing and Assessment: A PreK-12 U.S. Education Technology Market Report, testing and assessment products - which include software, digital content and related digital services - now make up the largest single category of educational technology sales.

Creative Commons licenses are the standard for sharing free content online for individual creators, governments, foundations, and academics. CC licenses have changed the way the internet works, providing a core function to some of the largest content platforms on the web. The result is greater access to knowledge and culture for everyone, everywhere.

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.