Quality Matters (QM), which offers quality assurance programs for online courses, is this fall expanding into online teaching certification. QM offers seven one- to two-week workshops that, when completed, award participants a Teaching Online Certificate attesting to their skills as effective online instructors. The Wednesday-to-Wednesday workshops, which cover topics such as assessment, course design and technology skills, are hosted every month, priced at $100 a week for members.
Category Archives: Online
OLC study: 90% students see online experience as good as face-to-face
Here is a new report from Online Learning Consortium, that had data somewhat different from recent finding of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
A guide to virtual education data
“The National Forum on Education Statistics has created a guide to elementary and secondary virtual education data. The term “virtual education” may include, but is not limited to, digital learning, distributed learning, open learning, online learning, computer-based learning, distance learning, blended learning, and other similar terms.In the document, a Virtual Education Working Group provides recommendations for collecting accurate, comparable, and useful data about virtual education. The guide also provides real-world examples and common practices implemented by state departments, local districts, and schools to modify their data systems and add elements that better reflect the needs unique to virtual education.
The guide was developed to assist state and local education agencies and other education stakeholders, such as policymakers and researchers, as they 1) consider the impact of virtual education on established data elements and methods of data collection, and 2) address the scope of changes, the rapid pace of new technology development, and the proliferation of resources in virtual education.”
Online Ed Skepticism and Self-Sufficiency: Survey of Faculty Views on Technology
The highlights of new report from Gallup is out (they surveyed 2,799 faculty members and 288 academic technology administrators in August and September 2014). The full report is available online, but you will need to provide your name and email address. Are you optimistic or somewhat skeptical? I am always amazed how people who never taught are eager to provide their opinion on how inferior online learning is…
Sloan-C is renamed
Those of us who follow developments in the world of online and blended learning, need to be aware that the Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) has changed its name to the Online Learning Consortium (OLC). OLC has members from 49 states and 14 countries. More details are at the OLC website.
Coding Skills (free online courses)
Wish to learn programming skills online and for free? There are some options available! There are about 20+ million students accessed CodeAcademy resources. See if it is for you!
Educanon
Hmm, I am not sure I would like to tech like this
Of course it looks cool… But I am not sure I would like to stand in front of 59 monitors and teach my students this way. But I also believe this model can be useful for executive education courses. What do you think?
Because Harvard??
Do you have concerns about online learning?
Some are pretty typical: easier than the f2f one, too expensive (and all that technology costs $$$), might replace instructors… Read this blog post and decide for yourself. I am a proponent of distance learning and truly believe that if done right, it could provide great learning opportunities to students, transform education, and make it more professionally rewarding for faculty!
New MERLOT issue is available online
Vol. 10, No. 1 of the MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT at http://jolt.merlot.org/) is now available online. Though the focus of this issue is MOOCs, there are some other interesting papers in this issue. Enjoy your MERLOT!