Oregon needs framework for online education

Yes, that is the subheading in the main editorial in the Register Guard (April 8th issue); the heading itself is "Adapt to virtual schools."

Like people in other fields, educators have been caught off balance by a migration of their profession into the online world. But there’s no stopping it — thousands of Oregon students already are receiving a public education through virtual schools, and their number will grow. Oregon needs to adapt to this new form of education by putting in place policies to see that its promise is fulfilled while ensuring full accountability both in terms of cost and results.

Maybe you are thinking, "really?" First a clarification: the editorial is not about higher education, but about the K-12 system. Well, I don't think it is about the "K" .... ha ha ha
The editorial notes that:

The distinction between classroom and online learning already is blurring as information technology is incorporated at all levels of education. The growth of online learning will accelerate as the technology supporting it grows steadily more powerful and less expensive. This expansion, in turn, will bring into being broader and more robust networks of social, technical and academic support.

Notice how similar the points are--I mean, this paragraph could easily be written in the context of higher education and online learning.
What was even more impressive? The editorial refers to online "learning" and not online "teaching". That is cool. It is not semantics at all--I am convinced that for way too long we have only focused on "teaching" and "teachers", and it is way past time to focus on what really matters in education: "learning" and "learners".

For the record: I am a learner, and am proud of being one :-)

Online grows at community colleges, and so does Angel?

Because of their mission, community colleges are a lot more responsive to changes in the "real world" and accordingly modify their courses and pedagogy. They have also jumped in big time with online learning. Arizona's Rio Salado is, of course, a huge symbol of this, though an outlier of sorts.

Therefore, it was not anything that was that new when I read in the Chronicle that:

Among other results, the survey found that:

• Seventy-four percent of colleges offered at least one “online degree,” meaning at least 70 percent of the course work required for the degree was offered online. That's up 10 percent from last year.
• Sixty-four percent of colleges plan to increase the number of "blended" courses, for which 30 to 79 percent of course content is delivered online, with some face-to-face meetings.
• Completion rates for online work continues to lag behind traditional courses. The retention rate for online courses was 65 percent, compared to 72 percent in face-to-face courses.
• Full-time faculty members continue to teach the majority of distance-education courses. Sixty-four percent of online courses are taught by full-time faculty members, with part-time faculty members handling the rest.
• The top challenge administrators said they faced in running distance-education programs was hiring the support personnel needed for technical assistance and staff training. That has been the No. 1 challenge identified by administrators since the survey's beginning.
• The primary challenge for faculty members was workload, also unchanged in four years. The greatest challenge for students was assessing learning and performance.

BTW, the same report also refers to "Angel":

One noteworthy departure was in the decline in the use of Blackboard and WebCT as learning-management systems. Fifty-nine percent of respondents indicated they use Blackboard or WebCT, down from 77 percent in 2007 (Blackboard took over WebCT in 2006). The biggest beneficiary of this decline seems to be Angel, which grew in usage from just under 10 percent of respondents in 2007 to over 20 percent last year.

Angel?