4. Online Education will even Further Displace Seat Time.
Stoloff, who attended the most recent Sloan-C Conference on Online Learning, said 2011 will find more colleges integrating online learning into their curriculums as core offerings, and not just adjuncts to classroom learning.
"New high school graduates have less and less patience for sitting and listening to long lectures in college," Stoloff said. "They want to be more active, and that means getting their hands on computers."
Looking out even further, Stoloff painted a future picture where colleges are less focused on "seat time" and more on validating learning regardless of where it takes place (be it overseas, in the community, or in a traditional classroom). "Engagement will become the central issue for education in the future," said Stoloff, "and learning won't necessarily be defined by how much 'seat time' a student has put in."
Gartner report
To optimize the utilization of teaching professionals as well as the campus and school building facilities, K-12 schools must use administrative and instructional software to redesign the concept of student and teacher assignment. Higher education institutionsmust recognize and leverage the preferences and habits of students and staff by incorporating social software into their e-learning portfolio
Pearson, the education and media conglomerate, is betting on it. The company will announce today a plan to sell courses aimed at preparing professors to teach online.
Already being used extensively in the higher-education space, Web-based learning is expected to continue proliferating for both high school and middle school students. Crowley Independent School District in Dallas is just one of many districts that's already embraced distance learning across various disciplines, most recently for its summer school program. The move not only pushed the district further into the technology age, but also saved it some money.
No longer interested in building their technology coffers with expensive hardware and software, today's K-12 school districts turned to more cloud-based applications in 2010 and are expected to continue down that path in the coming year. "We're doing a lot of cloud computing in our district," said Lynn Reedy, educational technology specialist at Stafford Public Schools in Stafford Springs, CT. "We keep all of our data on a network that's shared among teachers, and we encourage them to use the cloud."
Stafford is also partnering with other districts to create online educational options for teachers who need further enrichment on topics like "how to use your whiteboard" and "how to develop interactive lessons for your science class." Reedy said the expanded professional development helps "keep teachers on top of things and in tune with new technology."
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