Higher Education | Distance-Educator.com

Archive for the ‘Higher Education’ Category

Student Perceptions of the Most Effective and Engaging Online Learning Activities in a Blended Graduate Seminar

The principal concern of this research was to learn more about effective designs of learning activities in blended courses. A questionnaire was administered in three sections of a not-for-credit intensive blended graduate seminar in university teaching. The online activities included readings, videos, discussion forum activities and other activities using a range of web-based technologies. Students […]

Strengths-Based Analysis of Student Success in Online Courses

Online courses today give a broad, diverse population access to higher education. Despite postsecondary institutions embracing this opportunity, scholarly literature reveals persistent concern over low retention rates in online courses. In response to this concern, an explanatory sequential, mixed methods study was conducted in three phases at a public research university to simultaneously explore personal, […]

Pushing Toward a More Personalized MOOC: Exploring Instructor Selected Activities, Resources, and Technologies for MOOC Design and Implementation

This study explores the activities, tools, and resources that instructors of massive open online courses (MOOCs) use to improve the personalization of their MOOCs. Following email interviews with 25 MOOC and open education leaders regarding MOOC personalization, a questionnaire was developed. This questionnaire was then completed by 152 MOOC instructors from around the world. While […]

MOOC Makers: Professors’ Experiences With Developing and Delivering MOOCs

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have been described as purposeful educational resources for teaching, open educational initiatives, competency-based learning, and the like. They have also been described as an agent of higher education’s deterioration. Although MOOCs are often discussed in terms of their current and future usefulness, or lack thereof, in higher education contexts, very […]

Mobile instant messaging: New knowledge tools in global health?

Despite the proliferation of Mobile Instant Messaging (MIM) platforms, such as WhatsApp, studies that examine their role for learning and knowledge sharing are still rare. Using the context of global health, this study seeks to examine the ways in which MIM platforms are being used for learning and knowledge sharing and identify associated potentials and […]

Exploring the effects of visual aesthetics in e-learning for engineering students

e-Learning is changing the way students learn in the classroom. However, one of the least emphasised aspect in e-learning design concerns with aesthetics. Recent research in multimedia aesthetics highlighted the need to understand interaction from a multidisciplinary perspective. Aesthetics research in e-learning usually focuses on exploring the effects of positive aesthetics design towards neutral designs […]

What will universities be like in the future?

Universities, for all their diversity across the world, will become still more so over the next 25 years, under the pressures of financial, social, and above all technological change. eCampus News

D2L Announces Release of Magenta — Brightspace Evolving

Today, D2L launches its Magenta Release — the latest version of its Brightspace LMS — which lets students around the world get structured and meaningful feedback on any learning activity, helping to improve their learning outcomes. Desire2Learn

edX launches 9 master’s degrees through major university partners

To help meet a growing demand for skilled technology workers, edX, the online education platform backed by Harvard and MIT, announced this week it has expanded its graduate course offerings to include nine new programs. edscoop

As Alternative Higher-Ed Pathways Take Off, We’re Still Forgetting Parent Learners

Higher education has, in some ways, woken up to the realities of demographic and technological change. Institutions can’t keep preparing the same students for the same jobs in the same way they always have. The savviest colleges and universities are adapting to better serve adult and lower-income students, and the ones that aren’t are losing […]