Noted online course developer Debbie Morrison discusses in her latest blog entry the ways in which instructors can help curb what many in the field of online education know to be true: cognitive overload is rampant among online students. This entry is the first in what Morrison says will be a four-part series “that presents instructional strategies addressing the unique needs of online students.” And the greatest of those needs, she argues here, is support. Morrison’s post provides a learner … Continue reading
Chicken sandwiches and presidential politics aside, perhaps no topic is as divisive in the United States these days as the future of higher education and its relationship with the Internet. The results of a recent nationwide survey underscore that notion. More than 1,000 Internet experts, researchers, observers and users were polled in the Pew Internet/Elon University survey, called Bricks and Clicks: What is the potential future of higher education and the Internet by 2020? In their responses, some technology stakeholders view … Continue reading
[A message from Dave King, associate provost of Oregon State University Outreach and Engagement; and Lisa L. Templeton, executive director of Oregon State University Extended Campus] No doubt you’ve seen several stories lately in the news about what some people are calling MOOCs – Massive Open Online Classes – with 160,000 or so students in online open courseware classes. (See below.) The increased profile of these classes and the new enterprises involved in their development raise questions about what it … Continue reading
Simply adding a video component to an online course does not automatically improve its quality, but a recent study seems to show pretty conclusively that learners respond well to video lectures as a way of receiving course content. The study was conducted by Debbie Morrison, an online course developer at The Master’s College near Los Angeles, and as she noted in her blog post, the pool of students surveyed was relatively small. However, 90 percent of the learners who took … Continue reading
The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus blog last week highlighted a new study that bolsters the notion that student learning outcomes are the same in hybrid courses as they are in a traditional classroom. The findings come from a study released last Tuesday by Ithaka S+R, a nonprofit dedicated to helping the academic community use technology to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways. Hybrid courses are taught partly online and partly face-to-face, and an increasing number of studies … Continue reading
ITHAKA, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping the academic community use digital technologies to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways, this week released a study that examines the obstacles preventing higher education institutions in the United State from embracing online learning systems. Here is a quick overview of the study and its proposed solutions: The purpose of this study is to explore the key obstacles that stand in the way of widespread adoption of highly interactive, adaptive, online learning … Continue reading
[Summary from: The Journal of Educators Online, January 2012.] Online education is becoming an increasingly important component of higher education. The Sloan Foundation 2010 Survey of Online Learning reports that more than 30 percent of all students take at least one online course during their college career. Because of this, attention is now turning to the quality of student outcomes that this instructional method provides. However, there is a huge gap in empirical investigations devoted to the link between technology … Continue reading
One of the week’s hot discussion topics among college faculty stems from the findings of a study that suggests many instructors aren’t properly taking advantage of Web-based tools to make their online courses more interactive. As detailed yesterday in a blog post from the Chronicle of Higher Education, the study claims that the community college professors who were observed for the study relying “on static course materials that aren’t likely to motivate students or encourage them to interact with each … Continue reading
[Summary from: The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, January 2012] Rapport has been recognized as important in learning in general but little is known about its importance in distance education (DE). The study we report on in this paper provides insights into the importance of rapport in DE as well as challenges to and indicators of rapport-building in DE. The study relied on interviews with 42 Canadian high school DE teachers. … Challenges to building rapport … Continue reading
When you replace the traditional classroom with the Internet, it’s easy to lose the vital face-to-face connection between instructors and students. That makes it imperative for distance-education instructors to find new, effective ways to interact with the diverse group of people taking their courses. And thanks to the magic of the Internet, there are a host of innovative resources that can replicate the physical classroom. One of the newest and best tools is Google Hangouts, a video chat program that … Continue reading