Some critics of distance learning say face-to-face classes give students a better learning environment, but a recent Indiana University study found that online learners reported deeper approaches to learning than classroom-based learners. Read article
If quality online course design is your goal, view the presentation below for a guided tour that will help identify a standard of excellence in online course development. During this presentation, you will learn about the standards developed by Quality Matters (QM), a recently completed, highly successful project that developed an inter-institutional process for recognizing quality online courses.
Presentation Link: http://cdl.utpa.edu/techinnovations/10-30/index.html
Presentation Handout: http://cdl.utpa.edu/techinnovations/10-30/handouts.pdf
The Blackboard services will be unavailable on Saturday October 25, 2008 from 8:00am through 1:00pm. There will be some maintenance performed on the university’s data center on Saturday morning, and this maintenance will have an impact on the availability of the Blackboard servers. We apologize for the inconvenience.
The Center for Online Learning, Teaching & Technology hosted its first Innovations in Online Learning Luncheon for the Fall 2008 semester. To Access the archived presentation of "Considering Mobile Learning for your Institution", please click here, or access it by pasting the URL below into your web browser:
http://ai.acrobat.com/p24135081/
A copy of the web conference materials can be downloaded from the link(s) below:
Thank you for attending this presentation. We hope to see you on our next luncheon.
Many colleges these days are trying hybrid or blended models of teaching in which students spend some time in a classroom but do some work online, and a new study suggests that students learn just as well as they do in a traditional course.
Rather, while the faculty expert must know how the information is relevant and how it should be worked and used, the students should be able to access the content in whatever form they find best for them - customization. This is an essential characteristic of an MMC. Mobile technology users do not take well to hyper control of their usage and likewise, this generation of learners should not be subjected to control of input in a course of study. Rather than see this as an unnecessary accommodation of the part of the faculty teacher, it is more to the point to realize how much further this takes the learning potential towards the realm of learner autonomy which has always been the goal of higher education.
Simply providing online discussion forums is not enough to keep students engaged in virtual courses, according to educators who are well-versed in online instruction: For real learning to occur in an online setting, virtual-school educators must establish clear rubrics and enforce rules for participation.
A technical report from a University of Houston
Department of Health and Human Performance
researcher finds that students in a hybrid class that incorporated instructional technology with in-class lectures scored a letter grade higher on average than their counterparts who took the same class in a more traditional format. Read More
Community colleges are increasingly finding that many of the issues they deal with on a day-to-day basis — retention and remedial education, to name two — are just as present among the students they don’t see as the ones who show up for class on campus. Read More
My virtual representation of me, commonly known as an avatar, can outperform me as a teacher any day. It can pay unwavering attention to every student in a class of 100 or more; show my most spectacular actions while concealing any lapse, like losing my cool; and detect the slightest movement, hint of confusion, and improvement in performance of each student simultaneously. Read More
