Emerging media essential for grads

Not specific to online learning, but I found this article to be very interesting, and relevant.

Knowing how to navigate the Internet, blog and operate a BlackBerry is paying off for recent graduates. A study released by Ball State University found 67 percent of companies were willing to pay employees with emerging media skills a starting salary one to 4 percent higher than those without.

Read the entire article here

Is it April yet?

Hmm...I guess...I'd be anxious to see the full report to be fair.  But that would be my point too - was this a fair survey?  I dare say that if you surveyed a similar set of faculty members 30 years ago about SLO's and faculty's time and effort and pay with a 'pencil and paper versus electronic submissions of writings', you might get a similar "poo-poo-ing" of the quality, compensation and place in education.

Is it really fair to survey faculty and admin who don't teach online and/or are not interested in doing so?  What are they looking at when they assess the SLO's of online classes they are not privy to, against campus courses that they haven't sat-in on?

I've witnessed campus courses that were poorly delivered, as well as online courses that were pretty much 'self-delivered', as well as online courses that were rich of SLO's beyond many campus courses for the same subject.  However, I made an effort to go out and assess and compare courses.  How many faculty really know what they're dogging?

That's not to say that there is a huge need to improve, offer more and quality training, compensate for learning a new tool.  

Oh yeah, that reminds me - isn't a standard claim of anyone in education that we're not getting compensated enough for our time - especially extra time creating better learning opportunities and experience for students?

Professors Regard Online Instruction as Less Effective Than Classroom Learning

Not so good news about online teaching and learning, according to this report in the Chronicle.  Here is an excerpt from the Chronicle report (The full results from the survey will be available only in April):

Instructors' extra time and effort aren't being rewarded financially or professionally, and what's more, online education doesn't translate into better learning outcomes, said respondents in the faculty survey. More than 10,000 faculty members at 67 public campuses responded to the survey.

While 30 percent of faculty members surveyed felt that online courses provided superior or equivalent learning outcomes when compared with face-to-face classes, 70 percent felt that learning outcomes were inferior. Among faculty members who have taught online courses, that figure drops to 48 percent, but that still represents a "substantial minority" holding a negative view, Mr. Seaman said.

The survey also found that a majority of faculty members felt that institutions provided inadequate compensation for those taking on the additional responsibility of teaching online courses. And many respondents said that students needed more discipline before they could benefit from online instruction. Low retention rates among students and the lack of consideration of online teaching experience in tenure-and-promotion decisions were also cited as barriers to faculty interest in online teaching.

Identity Crisis Online?

Looks like vendors are quickly gearing up for the eventuality that there might be a big push to establishing the identities of online students. I blogged about this earlier. Here is one I received in the email (no, am not advocating for their product; all I am doing is bringing this to your attention). The whole thing reminds me, yet again, of the fantastic cartoon in the New Yorker a few years ago, which I provide here for your amusement, before you get to read the email from a vendor :-)

And now the email from the vendor ....

Increase academic integrity and reduce the costs of proctored exams by ensuring the right student is taking an assessment.

Join Campus Technology, National American University and Acxiom to learn how your institution can verify student identity without hardware from within your learning management system (LMS).

Register today to hear Dr. Jeffrey L. Bailie, Director of Online Faculty Development Distance Learning at National American University and Michael Jortberg of Acxiom describe how NAU reduces the need for proctored exams.

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

Don't miss this important and timely webinar. Click here to register now.

If you and your institution leaders would like a one-on-one demonstration to learn how to increase distance learning integrity with authentication, please visit www.Acxiom.com/StudentIdentity or give us a call. We've taken common practices from the financial industry and enabled them for distance learning programs, which we can integrate with your LMS. Our cost-effective identity verification process offers:

• Secure verification capabilities designed to reduce the cost associated with testing center registration, proctor validation and proctored exams.
• Predictable pricing and the flexibility to meet instructor and administrator needs.
• No servers, staff, web cam, broadband of fingerprints required.

Thank you,

Mike Jortberg
Acxiom Corporation
Michael.Jortberg@acxiom.com
1.630.944.0379

Learn more about ensuring academic integrity in distance education by reading Acxiom's white paper – "Methods to Verify Identity of Distance Learning Students." Click here for your free copy.

System Requirements for Webinar

• PC-based attendees: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista
• Macintosh®-based attendees: Mac OS® X 10.4 (Tiger®) or newer

An absolutely riveting online course

Here's an excellent article about designing online courses:

An absolutely riveting online course: Nine principles for excellence in web-based teaching

Source: Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology

Abstract: This article explores excellence in web-based teaching. Drawing on the views of experts in the field and the perspective of their own years of experience, the authors compiled a list of 9 principles to provide direction in the search for online excellence. The principles include: the online world is a medium unto itself; sense of community and social presence are essential to online excellence; in the online world, content is a verb; great online courses are defined by teaching, not technology. The list is not intended to be an exclusive set of principles or a comprehensive guide to online teaching. Rather it is a collection of important ideas and suggestions for teaching excellence in the online world.

This article could be a great resource for faculty on campus who are teaching online, and at the same time could provide a framework for our activities with the Online Learning Task Force.

2009 Horizon Report just out

The 2009 Horizon Report is out today and is worth a look. While it does not specifically address online learning, it does speak to the inevitability of increased use of technology in teaching and learning.

This quote is from the blog: Friends: Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services

Each year, the Horizon Report describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact on higher education within three adoption horizons over the next one to five years. “Campus leaders and practitioners alike use the report as a springboard for discussion around emerging technology,” noted Larry Johnson, chief executive officer of the NMC. “Over the six years that the report has been published, the impact on technology planning and discussions on campuses has been substantial. Now with six years of data to consider, we continue to look back at the overarching trends over time. What we see is that there are several long-term, conceptual themes that have affected, and continue to affect, the practice of teaching and learning in profound ways.” More than 75,000 copies of the 2008 Horizon Report were distributed in print and electronically last year.

The six areas of emerging technologies selected this year that will have significant impact on higher education:

1. Mobiles
2. Cloud Computing
3. Geo-everything
4. The Personal Web
5. Semantic-Aware Applications
6. Smart Objects

You can download the full report or watch a video of the presentation introducing the report to the world. It’s nearly 54 minutes long (the first 10 minutes are introductory) but I took a glance with no intention of watching the full thing and then couldn’t turn it off. Lots to think about here.

Axis of Evil? :-)

If all we learn is online, then .... writes Nicholas Carr:

Three things have happened, in a blink of history's eye: (1) a single medium, the Web, has come to dominate the storage and supply of information, (2) a single search engine, Google, has come to dominate the navigation of that medium, and (3) a single information source, Wikipedia, has come to dominate the results served up by that search engine. Even if you adore the Web, Google, and Wikipedia - and I admit there's much to adore - you have to wonder if the transformation of the Net from a radically heterogeneous information source to a radically homogeneous one is a good thing. Is culture best served by an information triumvirate?

It's hard to imagine that Wikipedia articles are actually the very best source of information for all of the many thousands of topics on which they now appear as the top Google search result. What's much more likely is that the Web, through its links, and Google, through its search algorithms, have inadvertently set into motion a very strong feedback loop that amplifies popularity and, in the end, leads us all, lemminglike, down the same well-trod path - the path of least resistance. You might call this the triumph of the wisdom of the crowd. I would suggest that it would be more accurately described as the triumph of the wisdom of the mob. The former sounds benign; the latter, less so.

Well, you may want to re-read this posting on whether Google is making us stupid!