Cathy Swan's List: Online Learning

• Until now, online learning has been regarded as the poor stepchild of the higher-education world – widely suspected of being a second-rate substitute for the real thing. But that’s about to change. The digital revolution is going to disrupt higher education in the same way it’s disrupted so many other industries.
• The digital revolution will make higher education better, cheaper, more accessible, more
• ngaging and far more customized than anything that exists
• gaging and far more customized than anything that exists
• today.
• Over the last few years technology implementations in the K-12 sector reached record levels with tablets, laptops, social networking, and other e-learning technologies making their debut in classrooms around the nation.
• “the unbundling of the university,” the “modularization of education” or “eliminating the middleman”
• Two Iowa school districts will launch online-only academies next fall,
• “We have small, rural districts and large urban districts … and both will be able to offer courses that are now impossible (to offer) because of the limitations of the personnel that you need in a rural school.” The provision would allow the state to better “level the playing field for all school districts in the state,”

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