"Blended Learning" More Effective than Face-to-Face

"Blended Learning" More Effective than Face-to-Face (Source: Education Week, 2009)

source: United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA)

Download Report:Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning
http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf

A new report http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf released today by the U.S. Department of Education, which analyzed 46 studies comparing online learning to face-to-face education, concluded that "blended learning," or programs that include elements of both face-to-face and online learning, is somewhat more effective than either approach by itself. The study also found that, by itself, online learning was more effective at raising student achievement than face-to-face instruction exclusively.

"This new report reinforces that effective teachers need to incorporate digital content into everyday classes and consider open-source learning management systems, which have proven cost effective in school districts and colleges nationwide," said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in a statement. "To avoid being caught short when stimulus money runs out, school officials should use the short-term federal funding to make immediate upgrades to technology to enhance classroom instruction and to improve the tracking of student data."

I'm sure online education advocates are thrilled at the conclusions drawn by this report. But while it does put online education, especially in a blended environment, in a favorable light, there are a couple of significant disclaimers.

Researchers found that blended learning environments often included additional learning time and incorporated more instructional elements, which "suggests that the positive effects associated with blended learning should not be attributed to the media, per se," said the report. Also, the analysis found very few studies conducted specifically with K-12 schools, therefore "caution is required in generalizing to the K-12 population because the results are derived for the most part from studies in other settings (e.g., medical training, higher education)."

In fact, the report goes so far as to say, "the most unexpected finding was that an extensive initial search of the published literature from 1996 through 2006 found no experimental or controlled quasi-experimental studies that both compared the learning effectiveness of online and face-to-face instruction for K-12 students and provided sufficient data for inclusion in a meta-analysis."

That's a pretty sad statement on the amount of research, or lack thereof, on K-12 online learning

Download Report: http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf

The Tower and the Cloud

Bullet points from Richard N Katz's keynote presentation - Vice President of Educause

• Powershift in Higher Ed- 1100-? (popes>princes>professors>people)
• Stanley Katz - don't mistake a tool for a goal
• Martin Trow - information technology is embedded in, and used by, institutions that have a history.
• Higher Ed shift from public good to private investment
• We are in the information age and we are in the information business
• The cloud is big! How is the cloud growing to envelop our Universities? How is the University using the cloud to extend it's presence? How might the cloud alter the form of our social institutions?
• google search of "professor" takes you to wikipedia and ratemyprofessor.com
• Emergence of the Collective - wikipedia, citizen journalism, seti
• Exponential growth looks like nothing is happening until it explodes - Ray Kurzwell
• We live in a knowledge revolution, but colleges are not at the center of that revolution.
• Increasing access to knowledge does not equal increasing literacy or numeracy.
• The context of IT does not equal the context of higher ed (we do not serve all who can learn, we have not made higher ed more efficient, we have not yet transformed learning)
• Really Neat IT does not equal student engagement and success ( high rates of attrition, evidence of declining engagement, high need of remediation, the vanishing student)
• Everything digital, everyone online, does not equal privatizing of knowledge
• YET Great IT = Great Research
• Open Education is surprising us!
• Cloudy Future: School of Athens?
• We are now a consumer goods.
  
  
  
• Since technology is so high quality, the time is now to ask what is the "idea" of the university? What is the university trying to do? what does the institution really need to do well to manifest its intent? What are the information infrastructure, environment, and services that will enable(or drive) this?
• Do we have a strategy and an infrastructure to: discover, engage, attract, and develop talent? Re-think scholarly communications? Promote scholarly literacy, engagement, and global citizenship? Make the institution influential on local, regional, national, or world affairs.
• Universities are aggregaters of talent.
• Do our policies and incentives reinforce what our infrastructure, services and resources enable?
• Summing it up -- IT has gotten better. So good in fact, it allows us to change things. Profoundly. IT allows others to change things as well, making our task more urgent and more complex. Our challenge is less technical and more one of institutional purpose, adaptability, and will. The needs of our stakeholders are changing. Soon virtual environments to support learning and discovery will rival and surpass "built" ones, in certain cases. The successful university of the future will know its values, have clarity of purpose, and an IT capacity to reflect and extend those values and purposes globally.

I'm Presenting at the 2009 Sloan-C/Moodle Moot Conference

Just a quick update to let you know that I am presenting at the Sloan-C/MoodleMoot 2009 Conference in San Francisco, CA.  I am in San Francisco right now and enjoying the area.  This is my first time in California. It's a bit chillier than I thought it would be ( high 60's) compared to Ohio (80's).  I'm looking forward to the conference as there are quite a few presentations that interest me.   Here is info about my presentation. Feel free to contact me if you are at the conference.

TITLE: 
University 2.0: Open source as a cornerstone

PRESENTERS:
Amanda Rondeau, Director, Emerging Academic Technologies Distributed Education and Instructional Technology Office of the Senior Vice President & Provost, University of Minnesota
Terence Armentano, Assistant Director, Center for Online and Blended Learning, Bowling Green State University
Marc Oehlman, Interim Director, Center for Academic Technology, CSU Monterey Bay
Andrew Roderick, Technology Development Manager, Academic Technology, San Francisco State University

DESCRIPTION:
As budgets decrease, the use of open source software for enterprise-level applications has increased within higher education. This session will examine current open-source development and integration projects at four different campuses and strategies each campus has implemented related to teaching and learning, technology management, and organizational administration.

Colleges consider using blogs instead of blackboard: Getting closer, but not completely thought through, in my opinion

The article titled, "Colleges Consider Using Blogs Instead of Blackboard" in the Chronicle of Higher Education, gets some things right and some things wrong, in my opinion. I want to keep this somewhat short because I could write a novel on this topic. First, they understand that paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for Blackboard might not be the best technological solution to facilitate learning. Second, they have experienced the sheer power of the Wordpress blogging platform, which can be used to develop websites that facilitate online learning, eportfolios, blogs, and more... PLUS it's OPEN SOURCE. Yes, it's license free. "What? Something must be wrong with it then." Nope, only one's inability to understand open source software and how it works. We have implemented Wordpress at BGSU as the foundation of our web 2.0 learning landscape. The platform enables the brilliant minds of our university to easily consume, collaborate, communicate, and create content. It facilitates the publication of audio, video, images, and presentations quite easily. In fact, I am giving a presentation on our Wordpress project at the 2009 Moodle Moot/ Sloan-C Conference in San Francisco. In essence, the Wordpress Platform is very powerful and customizable and could be used to deliver great content. If the only thing they wanted a learning management system to do was to present content and provide an interactive platform for learning, then it would meet their needs just fine, but the Learning Management System must do more than that. Wordpress, without tons of customizations to the core, cannot and does not provide the same functionality that a Learning Management System can provide. A better direction for CUNY to go would be to continue to support Wordpress because it is an amazing teaching and learning platform, BUT ALSO look into implementing Moodle, an open source learning managements system, to replace Blackboard if they are unhappy with Blackboard. I personally think Blackboard and Moodle are equals with very different price tags. Either way, the technological infrastructure of Moodle and Blackboard is designed to do different things than the technology in Wordpress. For example, Moodle and Blackboard both have grade books, test creation tools, advanced discussion forums, assignment drop boxes, and they interface with a variety of Student Information Systems for enrollment management. To draw an analogy from a brick and mortar classroom, Moodle/Blackboard would be a classroom with a locked door equipped with chalkboard, desks, computers, projector, and other cool teaching and learning tools. Wordpress would be like equipping all the computers in the classroom with state of the art technology that enables the teachers and students to take teaching and learning to another level that neither Learning Management Systems can provide on their own. Yes, they will both claim to have blogging features, but as I stated before Wordpress is much more than a blogging platform. My point is that CUNY would be better off looking at Moodle and Wordpress as an open source alternative to Blackboard instead of just Wordpress.

Wolfram Alpha - Making the world's knowledge computable - Now What?

See ya later great knowledge memorizers of the world, and hello great knowledge appliers of the world. Is it me or are the people inhabiting this third rock from the sun, connecting, computing, and collecting knowledge like nothing we've ever seen before. Well, except for maybe the time we humans tried building that Tower of Babel, which ended up not working out so well. Introducing.... Wolfram Alpha, a powerful computational knowledge engine that seeks to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by ANYONE. Connect this to a mobile device and we become walking and talking systematic knowledge carriers. We've had access to knowledge via the internet for quite some time, but this immediate access to systematic knowledge is something a little newer and worth pondering. I wonder if teachers will FINALLY stop creating tests that assess our students ability to memorize facts and start testing the application of those facts to solve real world problems. I'm especially looking at Universities to take up this challenge. With tools like Wolfram Alpha and Google Squared available to us, educational institutions should start building curriculum with the highest levels of Bloom's Taxonomy in mind. Maybe instructional designers could start with the fact that humans have access to just about all the available knowledge in the world and build from there. It sounds kind of funny, but it's true. This doesn't mean everyone understands the knowledge, but for the first time in history we do have easy access to it. Therefore, it is crucial we teach students where to find the knowledge, and then help them develop the skills to apply, analyse, synthesize, and evaluate it. We need to re-think assessment and skill acquisition for this day and age in this Knowledge Economy. It's time for schools to build curriculum that challenge us to really engage in the application of knowledge and not the memorization of definitions, forumulas, and factoids. That's lazy instruction. Yes, there is a place for memorizing in education...It is a good idea for teachers to memorize their students' names and interests. Personally, I don't care how great of a memorizor my accountant is. I want to know if that person can think about whole systems and solve financial problems that can save me money. What does it mean for you to have access to the world's systematic knowledge? How will you apply it? What does it mean for schools? How can they apply tools like Wofram Alpha and Google Squared to their curriculum. What does it mean for businesses? What do you think?

Major flaw in Blackberry design - RIM needs to fix this yesterday

I actually think my Blackberry Storm is a really cool gadget and would recommend it to everyone I know, EXCEPT that there is a HUGE flaw in the way RIM designed the tool and I haven't seen too many people talk about this FLAW yet. Had I known about this flaw in the design of the Blackberry, I may not have bought one. The flaw is glaring. Are you ready for it? Here it is. The phone only has 128 MB of dedicated memory for Applications compared to the 8 GB and Iphone has. Yes, the Storm is equipped with an 8 GB SD card, which is awesome, but none of that great memory can be used to store applications. I only have about 20 applications on my STORM and I only downloaded about 10 custom apps and I am unable to upgrade the OS because I don't have enough memory! Not to mention it leaks memory, so I have to pull the battery every day to free up about 20 megs of space. Can you believe that?! The Storm is an awesome gadget and I actually think it's features are superior to the current competition of smart phones, however, this flaw is too great to overlook and they should not sell another Blackberry until they get this fixed. I want RIM to provide us a FIRMWARE update NOW that fixes this problem. What do you think?

The Official White House on Flickr

A Flickr stream for the Whitehouse is a great idea. I think it gives the public a more personal, social, and connected feel to the government. If you comment on a photo you know someone in the whitehouse will see it and they may even check out your Flickr photos. Pretty cool. Check it out...http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse

Facebook App for BGSU News and Blogs

A FACEBOOK APPLICATION MAKES STAYING ON TOP OF BGSU NEWS EASIER!

There is now an application available for all Facebook users to keep track of what’s going on at BGSU. This application collects information from the top blogs at blogs.bgsu.edu, The BG News, and Campus Update straight to your Facebook so that you don’t have to go hunting for the latest news. Simply add the application found at http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=41501853292 and click on the arrows to see the top headlines from The BG News, business, sports, technology, and education related feeds at BGSU.

http://blogs.bgsu.edu/secondlife/2009/04/29/read-us-on-facebook/

University 2.0: Open source as a cornerstone

I will be presenting at a pre-conference workshop at the MoodleMoot 09 Conference, which is being jointly offered with the Sloan-C Symposium in San Francisco on June 17-19. My presentation is from 1pm-4pm on Wednesday June 18th. Here are some details about the workshop.

TITLE:
University 2.0: Open source as a cornerstone

PRESENTERS:
Bob Rubinyi, Director, Distributed Education, University of Minnesota
Terence Armentano, Assistant Director, Center for Online and Blended Learning, Bowling Green State University
Marc Oehlman, Interim Director, Center for Academic Technology, CSU Monterey Bay
Andrew Roderick, Technology Development Manager, Academic Technology, San Francisco State University

DESCRIPTION:
As budgets decrease, the use of open source software for enterprise-level applications has increased within higher education. This session will examine current open-source development and integration projects at four different campuses and strategies each campus has implemented related to teaching and learning, technology management, and organizational administration.

It's an honor to be on the panel, and I am excited to share what we have done at BGSU as well as learn what others are doing at their respective universities. This topic hits the tip of the iceberg with regard to what can be done with open source at the university. This will be an exciting conference!

Related TerenOnline blog posts:
Web 2.0 and Higher Ed
University 2.o
BGSU Goes Web 2.0

Awesome list of free math books

Awesome list of free math books | Education IT | ZDNet.com

I know, I know, this hardly constitutes light reading over Spring Break. However, e-booksdirectory.com features an incredibly useful list of 260 freely downloadable electronic books (largely in PDF) that could drive entire courses or act as much-need supplements to a standard textbook.

The books are primarily college-level texts, but many could serve graduate students or high school students. High school students in particular looking to extend their studies, prepare for specific college coursework, or engage in independent study for which their schools may not have a textbook could especially benefit from these texts. Many of the books would also serve as useful reference tools for high school mathematics and computer science teachers who want to ensure that their course content is adequately rigorous for college preparation.