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You’ve thought about taking an online class but perhaps you aren’t certain if this is an effective way to learn. Maybe you aren’t familiar with the methods that instructors are using now to create an interactive learning environment or you believe that your involvement in an online class is nothing more than reading a textbook, posting messages, and writing papers. Both of these perspectives are valid as some online instructors still rely on the textbook while others are finding additional interactive techniques of introducing you to the course concepts. This post provides an insider’s look into the challenge instructors face when they are developing instructional strategies, how this has a direct impact on your classroom experience, and the technological tools being utilized to make learning more meaningful.

online_learning

Colleges that teach at a distance must be able to offer students needed support and library services for a successful online experience.   For more than a century, the higher education model has remained relatively stable.  Yet, with the advent of the information age and globalization, changing demographics are driving today's trends in student services.  What we have grown accustomed to is being challenged, forcing us to adapt to this rapidly changing environment.  Perhaps, the most dramatic changes are occurring in how we deliver services to the distance learner. Distance education students need the same kinds of services as on-campus students but expect the services to meet their needs for flexibility and convenience.  To meet these evolving needs – colleges are creating innovative ways to to reach their distance learners with student support.

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A critical component of an effective retention program for online students is a learner support services program. While many factors contribute to attrition, at the top of the list are level of interaction and support. To this end, some students in distance learning programs and courses report feelings of isolation, lack of self-direction and management, and eventual decrease in motivation levels. This article describes the types of learner support services strategies that can effectively address these retention challenges. Examples from Western Governors University (WGU) are provided to describe these strategies in action.

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An analysis was conducted of the body of research studies on best practice in asynchronous or synchronous online instruction in higher education. The analysis used specific research design criteria and categorized studies by the type of theory used, such as creation of typologies. Many studies had flaws in research design and generally were pre-experimental case studies. Those studies most closely meeting the research criteria indicate online learning is viable and identify potential best practices in four categories: student behaviors, faculty-student interactions, technology support, and learning environment.

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Ivy Tech has long stood for promoting affordable, open-access education and training programs. Our chief goal is to enhance the development of Indiana’s citizens and communities along with strengthening the state economy. For that very reason, one in three students at Ivy Tech takes an online class each semester. And while many student learners are now accustomed to plugging in, a large number of our faculty and administrators have traditionally relied on in-room interaction for planning purposes.

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Let's think back to the mid-20th century, when accreditation first became the gatekeeper for students' eligibility for government grants and credit. At the time, the basic economic model of a university was, more or less, the same that it had been since the 1500s. Because subject-matter experts were scarce and real-time communication options were limited, it made sense to build impressive campuses to attract professors and enable teaching. With such large fixed costs, adding a few more professors was relatively cheap. A critical mass of professors attracted a critical mass of students, who attracted more professors, and so on. That model—substantial fixed costs with low marginal costs (the cost to offer one more class)—is the economic model that was "hard-wired" when colleges' accreditation status and revenue streams were inextricably linked. Because the strongest signals of value in a high-fixed-cost model are the physical plant and faculty credentials, accreditation mostly measures variables related to those. Because student mobility was quite limited, standards governing the transfer of credits were unnecessary. All that worked—for a long time. But online learning has a fundamentally different economic structure. Real-time and speedy synchronous and asynchronous communication options abound. The location of the professor and the student is irrelevant. Content can be cheap or free.

online_learning higher_education technology

A report from the American Enterprise Institute called "Diplomas and Dropouts" documented the wide disparity in graduation rates across 1,300 traditional colleges and universities, even between those with similar admissions criteria and students. The Washington Monthly's 2010 College Guide listed 50 "dropout factories"—all bricks-and-mortar institutions with graduation rates from 5 percent to 20 percent. A 2010 meta-analysis and review of online-learning studies, published by the U.S. Department of Education, concluded that online learning was as good as or slightly more effective than traditional face-to-face instruction.

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Although online courses at postsecondary institutions promise adults access, flexibility, and convenience, many barriers to online learning remain. This article presents findings from a qualitative case study, which explored the phenomenon of undergraduate and graduate women learners’ persistence in online degree-completion programs at a college in the Northeast of the United States. Research questions asked why women learners persisted or failed to persist, and how factors supporting or hindering persistence influenced learners. Interviews with a purposeful sample of 20 participants revealed the complexity of variables affecting learners’ persistence to graduation. Findings suggested that multiple responsibilities, insufficient interaction with faculty, technology, and coursework ranked highest as barriers to women’s persistence. Strong motivation to complete degrees, engagement in the learning community, and appreciation for the convenience of an online degree-completion option facilitated persistence.

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"Most colleges are underprepared for the wave of veterans returning from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the largest influx since after the Vietnam War. The same is true of many employers. It’s not that the colleges and companies aren’t looking for veterans, says Gunnar Counselman, the founder and chief executive of Fidelis College. But they often do a poor job of understanding how to attract veterans and help them acclimate to civilian life once they return, he says. Fidelis, a San Francisco-based startup, seeks to help military members graduate from college. The company’s students will take lower-division courses at an affiliated online college while on active duty and then transfer to a traditional university. When they graduate, Fidelis will place them with employers it knows are looking to hire veterans."

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The author identifies elements of online learning essential to supporting the learner in reaching learning goals. The author accomplishes this thorough discussion of theoretical approaches to distance teaching and learning (autonomy and independence, industrialization, and interaction and communication), defining terms (online learning, distance learning, and e-learning), exploring dimensions of flexibility (individual flexibility vs collaborative learning), and providing several perspectives of student support. The author concludes with a description of Aoki and Pogroszewski's Virtual University Reference Model of support services in online distance education. Of particular interest are the illustrations and accompanying descriptions of three models (Tinto's, Bajtelsmit's, and Kember's) explaining reasons for student drop out. The article contains seven detailed figures. The author is a professor and director of research at NKI Norway.

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"Plans to require online classes for all Idaho high school graduates have grown more vague during the struggle over revamping the state’s cash-strapped school system, but it remains likely some sort of online mandate will face the class of 2016. And judging from a Statesman survey of six Treasure Valley school districts, student participation will have to go way up. During the past full school year, just a small fraction of students at surveyed high schools took at least one online course through their district. Those ranged from around 4 percent in Caldwell and Vallivue to nearly 20 percent at Boise’s Timberline. The Caldwell School District has been planning a major increase in online emphasis since before state schools Superintendent Tom Luna pitched the online graduation requirement. Officials at other local districts say they anticipate beefing up online offerings, but serious discussion of how to get ready for new graduation requirements awaits word of what those requirements will be."

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"There are several ways to arrive at this figure, but the simplest is to divide the cost of the course per student by the number of hours they spend studying. In my particular case, the breakeven cost per student (in essence, the full tuition fee) of $12,500 divided by 1,000 hours of study. ... A graduate online program of 30 credits (10 courses each of three credits) using for nearly all courses a standard LMS, with discussion forums, a small amount of group project work on some courses, and two or three assignments per course, plus a good deal of reading, either online or in print. Courses lasted 13 weeks and students studies in cohorts. In terms of design, pretty standard (all right, boring), but students seemed to like it. Course completion rates were high (85%+)."

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"Felice Nudelman, executive director of education for the New York Times Company, says the publisher has developed its own digital-learning platform and is beginning to collaborate with colleges. “We did a course with Ball State University, and it just took off,” she said at the 2011 Higher Ed Tech Summit in Las Vegas. Students get a long-term collaborative experience, she says, involving faculty members and reporters from the New York Times newsroom."

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"This course is a graduate level course designed to provide the student with the opportunity to critically explore, examine, evaluate, and experience the design, implementation, and the use of distance learning technologies for education. It is designed to discuss how innovations such as the World Wide Web, multi-user virtual environments, computer-supported collaborative learning, and online communities are shaping the evolution of distance education and distributed learning. In this course a general sense on telecommunications in distance education and their applications will be studied. Since a major chunk of our graduate students already work at a school or are eventually planning to work at schools, and are expected to be the key people in implementation and diffusing technology at their schools, this course is of a high value for our graduate students. "

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Resources for Learning (RFL), an innovative online catalog of educational content for teachers and students developed by the American Museum of Natural History, has received the Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE) - the first time a natural history museum has won this coveted honor. The award, sponsored by the journal Science, recognizes outstanding, free online educational materials that enrich science learning.

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"Every chapter in the widely distributed first edition has been updated, and four new chapters on current issues such as connectivism and social software innovations have been added. Essays by practitioners and scholars active in the complex, diverse, and rapidly evolving field of distance education blend scholarship and research; practical attention to the details of teaching and learning; and mindful attention to the economics of the business of education."

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"Despite predictions that the growth of online education would begin to level off, colleges reported the highest-ever annual increase in online enrollment—more than 21 percent—last year, according to a report on an annual survey of 2,600 higher-education institutions from the Sloan Consortium and the Babson Survey Research Group. In fall 2009, colleges—including public, nonprofit private, and for-profit private institutions—reported that one million more students were enrolled in at least one Web-based course, bringing the total number of online students to 5.6 million. That unexpected increase—which topped the previous year’s 17-percent rise—may have been helped by higher demand for education in a rocky economy and an uptick in the number of colleges adopting online courses."

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"Many universities may be vulnerable to complaints about accessibility issues in online courses because of the decentralized way they handle compliance with a federal law that protects people with disabilities from discrimination, a new report says."

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