Online courses: A liberating and inspiring ally to residential education

Distance learning courses have been around for a very long time and have often been treated by mainstream academia as the step child to residential face to face classes. However, all of that is changing as advances in technology have made online education an excellent way to learn as well as enhance the residential experience.  The president of MIT recently said, "Online education is not the enemy of residential education but rather a profoundly liberating and inspiring ally." I wrote about this "ally" back in 2007 in the following post, University 2.0 - Online Classes Enhance Universities.  Within that blog entry, I posed the following comment and questions, "Online information and communication is changing the way the world interacts and learns...What are universities across the world doing about this information revolution? How are we demonstrating to our future students that we are not only a part of this human network but that we are leaders in the movement?" Read entire post here.

Now in 2012, we are beginning to see how some of the most prestigious research and discovery universities are answering that question. It will be interesting to see how this effects the current higher education ecosystem.

Here is what Harvard and MIT are doing.

Online Courses Increase Access to Courses Students Actually Want to Take

Universities that offer online courses and programs enable students to choose classes based on what they want to learn rather than what fits into their schedule. Online course content can be accessed and engaged any time, any place, so that students are not bound by geographic locations, scheduling conflicts, building conflicts, etc. When I did my undergrad work, I never once got the class schedule I planned on because classes were either full or conflicting.

Let's use video (and the internet) to reinvent education

Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. He shows the power of interactive exercises, and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script -- give students video lectures to watch at home, and do "homework" in the classroom with the teacher available to help.

A few of my distance learning principles for success

First, you have to have a passion for learning new things. You can't ever be satisfied with the status quo, especially since we live in the "Information Age." My action steps for this principle are to start subscribing to prominent bloggers in your field today. And if you want to be looked upon as an expert in your field, start contributing to the conversations in your field by starting a blog and writing about issues in your own field that you are passionate about. This will open up a whole new world to you and lead to many new connections. This is one of the reasons I eagerly developed a University-wide blogging system for BGSU (https://blogs.bgsu.edu). Every student, faculty, and staff member can create as many blogs as they want. It has been awesome to see what happens when everyone at the university has a voice on the web. They create, communicate, and collaborate in ways not possible in years past. The day of hording information is over because information is ubiquitous and we have now entered the day of sharing information. It's those that know what to do with all the good information on the internet that will make a difference in the world. If you don't believe me, ask yourself why MIT has uploaded 1900 courses to the internet as well has hundreds of other schools. They understand that information is not the commodity, it is the interaction with experts and peers from a community of learners around that information. Second, if you are an online instructor, communicate, communicate, communicate, with your learners. Many people just entering the world of distance learning may think of it as a glorified correspondence course, however they could not be further from the truth. Online learning actually facilitates many new streams of interaction and communication and the best instructors leverage those streams in their courses (i.e. social networks, blogs, twitter, youtube.) However, they must use these technologies appropriately and with much wisdom, as they may end up just generating noise instead of true learning opportunities. It is for this reason at BGSU that we have an expert staff of educational technologists in the Center for Online and Blended Learning, to work with our online faculty.

The World is Open

News: 'The World Is Open' - Inside Higher Ed

Technology is changing higher education in more ways than can be counted. Distance education has become common. Leading universities are putting course materials or even entire courses online -- free. The Obama plan for community colleges envisions free online courses that could be used nationwide. Curtis J. Bonk, a professor of instructional systems technology at Indiana University, surveys this landscape in The World Is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education (Jossey-Bass). Bonk responded to questions about the book in an e-mail interview.

A very fascinating read.  The open access to educational materials and experts is virtually limitless. What role do universities play in such an open educational world.  For example, in years past, one aspect of accreditation for colleges involved access to scholarly journals, but as the article reveals in the following quote, this has changed drastically in the information age, "When I was in primary school in the 1960s and 1970s, I had to walk next door to borrow the Compton Encyclopedia volume that I needed. They were free for me to use when the neighbors were home. Today, Yahoo! Education provides free access to the Roget’s II Thesaurus (260,000 synonyms and cross references), Colombia Encyclopedia (more than 50,000 entries and 84,000 hypertext cross-references between the content), and American Heritage Dictionary (definitions, word spellings, and word suggestions as well as more than 200,000 entries, 70,000 audio word pronunciations, and 900 full-page color illustrations). If that is not enough, there is the Encyclopedia Britannica, and yes, that trusty Wikipedia that is now the seventh most accessed Web site in the United States." After reading the article, "What are a few ways you expect these movements to change higher education in another 10 or 20 years?"

BLOGS.BGSU a Digital and Educational Revolution at Bowling Green State University

There is a lot more than meets the eye to BLOGS.BGSU.EDU, the homegrown blogging platform developed by Assistant Director of COBL, Terence Armentano. Blogs and microblogs such as Twitter have taken the world by storm. Why? Because they blast open the floodgates of communication. They give everyone a voice and anyone with an internet or even a mobile phone connection can listen in and talk back. Upon closer inspection of BLOGS.BGSU, one will notice it is not just about new technology, it's about a movement, a change in thinking, a paradigm shift, a leveling of the proverbial playing field. It's about what happens to a university when everyone has a voice. For the first time in history, we can leverage the collective intelligence of the university to potentially solve greater and more complex problems in the world. Think about the following scenario: Everyone at the university has unique life experiences and varying degrees of expertise in life. Some have much more life and work experience than others, but surely the sum is greater than its parts. For example, if we have around 20,000 faculty, staff, and students here at BGSU and the average age is 25 then we have 500,000 years of experience between us that we can learn from. BLOGS.BGSU is a great way to leverage such experiences as everyone can contribute. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

BLOGS.BGSU is built upon the Wordpress platform, and everyone with a BGSU email account can login today and start blogging. However, upon closer investigation of the system, one will notice that it can be used to do more than blog. In fact, one will discover the nerve center of a web 2.0 revolution at BGSU in which students, faculty, and staff are creating, consuming, categorizing, and publishing content to the internet as well as networking, interacting, discussing, and critiquing each others posts. The system is so flexible it can be used to build everything from a simple news blog to a web 2.0 portal complete with static and dynamic web pages, blogs, podcasts, flickr integration, Google statistics tracking, and more. Depending on one's goals, the system can be leveraged to create websites, portfolios, tweets, podcasts, journals, news sites, and more. One of the best ways to understand this phenomenon is to view examples of how it is being used. The following are just a few of the creative ways in which people and departments at BGSU are using the system:

Center for Online and Blended Learning
Academic Technology
BGSU Strategic Planning Blog
Dr. Sue Mota - MBA 6070x
Brad's Art 101 Blog
Blackboard Video Tutorial Database Blog
MBA Blog
Jake Graving's Art 101 Blog
Music Library and Sound Recordings Archives News
Center for Teaching and Learning

News from the Curriculum Resource Center

The Rec Well Wire - Connecting Recreation and Wellness Enthusiasts
Dr. Natvig’s BGSU 1000 Blog -This blog is the main site for the music section of BGSU1000

SMC Blog - School of Media and Communication news/event blog
Second Life Virtual Campus
BGSU University Libraries News
Carolyn Kraut - Instructional Designer, COBL
Terence Armentano - Assistant Director, COBL

International Studies - The blog for International Studies majors at BGSU!
Dr. Gwen Evans - Companion site to Third Year Review
Language Learning

Interactive Communication Technologies Course Blog

Jordian Ross - Student Blog and Portfolio

Newsweek: Online schools are booming

The Newsweek article titled, "The Sound of One Hand Clicking:
Online schools are booming, thanks to their convenience, low cost, and improved quality" accurately captures the shift toward online friendliness in higher education. Universities are recognizing that students and working professionals are asking themselves, why go to college when college can come to us in a convenient, affordable, high quality way? A couple segments from the article:

Once targeted at older, working adults, distance learning has moved into the education mainstream at stunning speed over the past couple of years, as technology allows ever-richer, more-interactive learning experiences online—and as college costs continue to rise and classrooms are packed to capacity.For traditional brick-and-mortar institutions, that has meant a scramble to enter a lucrative market that used to be the exclusive territory of for-profit institutions such as the University of Phoenix and Kaplan University (which, like NEWSWEEK, is owned by The Washington Post Company).

"The stigma is gone," says Phillips (founder and CEO of Geteducated.com, a service that ranks online learning institutions) "Online learning has reached mass cultural acceptance. It's no longer the ugly stepsister of the higher-education world."

Using videos, podcasts, live chats, Webcams, and wikis, educators increasingly see online learning as a way to engage the videogame generation with pedagogy that feels more like entertainment than drudgery. Students in the new homeland-security master's degree program at the University of Connecticut this fall, for example, will have coursework that resembles Grand Theft Auto: dwelling in a cybercity called San Luis Rey plagued with suicide bombers, biochemical attacks, and other disasters.

Another important factor that has closed the prestige gap is the tight integration of online programs into their host institutions. When UMass launched UMassOnline in 2001, it used the same admission standards, the same faculty, the same curricula—and it awarded students degrees indistinguishable from those given to campus-going counterparts. The vision of UMassOnline as a seamless division of the university worked because "it fit with the culture of the institution," says Wilson, who was the CEO of UMassOnline until 2003, when he became the president of UMass. The venture has also been extremely profitable—UMassOnline earned $46.8 million in 2008.

Gamers will soon be able to interact with the virtual world using their thoughts and emotions alone.

Ok. This is a little freaky, but also interesting. I'm thinking The Matrix/Minority Report. What kind of impact might this have on virtual learning environments? Any thoughts? How long before blackboard integrates this technology as a building block. haha.

Gamers will soon be able to interact with the virtual world using their thoughts and emotions alone.

A neuro-headset which interprets the interaction of neurons in the brain will go on sale later this year. "It picks up electrical activity from the brain and sends wireless signals to a computer," said Tan Le, president of US/Australian firm Emotiv. "It allows the user to manipulate a game or virtual environment naturally and intuitively," she added. Read More...

How would you describe online teaching and learning to faculty that are curious but skeptical about quality?

I posed the following question in my online teacher training course, and thought the answer given by Dr. James McKean from Ohio University, would be beneficial to share, with his permission, on the blog. How would you respond to this question?

After participating in this course, how would you describe online teaching and learning to faculty that are curious but skeptical about quality. What advice would you give the faculty about how to best prepare to teach online? What advice would you give students to help them become successful online learners.

I will describe online teaching to other faculty who are skeptical about quality in the same manner that a qualitative researcher explains the underlying theoretical construct of naturalistic inquiry in a qualitative research project--there is more than one path in our quest for knowledge. Quality in online classes like quality in traditional classes is dependent upon sound pedagogical practices, development of learning outcomes and appropriate learning assessments. Students learn when they are actively engaged and online teaching offers a variety of pedagogical aids to facilitate learning. For those faculty who as Parker Palmer stated possess the "courage to teach," I would encourage them to embrace online teaching as another means to the same end--learning.

The best advice I would give faculty is to broaden their knowledge of course design and online teaching by completing an online teaching and learning course. Experiential learning is powerful as I have discovered over the past two weeks. I would advise students to shift their learning paradigm and understand that online learning requires them to devote the same or an even higher commitment to the learning process as a traditional class--or as my statistics professor used to say, "junk in, junk out." In the final analysis, online teaching can be a rewarding and satisfying experience for both students and faculty.

Teaching BGSU English Courses Online - A Podcast with Amanda Rzicznek

This is an interview I did with Amanda Rzicznek, an English Instructor at BGSU, about her preparation for building an online course and the interaction with her online students.
Click the play button to listen.


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Predicting the future of online learning

Predicting the future is tough business because often times unpredictable things happen, which change the course of life. [i.e. Movable Type, The Internet, Google (the search), etc.].

So the question is: What is the future of online learning?

The following are ideas that surfaced at the Sloan-C Conference from a presentation on this topic. I don't endorse all these ideas, however many of them make sense and are worthy of discussion. What are your thoughts?

• More mobile
  
• More modular
  
• Student expectations will rise
  
• More inter-insitutional collaboration
  
• Expansion of informal learning context
  
• Faculty development will be on demand
  
• People will aggregate there own learning spaces
  
• People will learn through YouTube (and other video web-sites)
  
• Re-evaluation about what it means to be an expert
  
• The rise of open source learning
  
• More visualization
  
• Everyone will be teaching with tech
  
• Learning will be more ad-hoc
  
• More fantasy-based learning
  
• Things will be more un-bundled just like in banking, publishing, music, dvd’s.
  

More terms associated with the future of online learning (some were repeated)

• modular
  
• synchronous
  
• asynchronous
  
• collaborative
  
• consumer driven
  
• media rich
  
• competency based
  
• visual
  
• networked
  
• accountable
  
• flexible
  
• audio enabled
  
• learning on the go
  
• gaming
  
• social networking
  
• student-created content
  
• blogs
  
• podcasting
  
• cross platform learning
  
• bricolage
  
• diverse organization and delivery
  
• just in time learning
  
• external certification
  
• more faculty issues
  
• second life