Archive for the ‘Online Learning’ Category

Learning Innovation = Residential Education + Online Learning

What would happen if every residential course was designed in the same way as our best online courses? Last week at the Summit for Online Leadership and Administration + Roundtable I was asked to define learning innovation. My answer came in the form of an equation: Learning Innovation = Residential Education + Online Learning Inside […]

College Credit MOOCs that Are Still Free to Access

It has become a truism that MOOCs aren’t always open anymore. Increasingly, courses pegged as massive, open and online are actually intended for use in for-credit programs that help people earn partial degrees (as long as they’re enrolled in a university program and pay tuition). Sometimes these courses can’t even be audited by people who […]

Dispelling the misconceptions of online education

We read with interest the recent opinion article, “Online learning isn’t as inclusive as you may think,” originally published by University Affairs in early May. We feel the authors provided a limited perspective regarding online education and online learners. We disagree with several of the authors’ contentions and generalizations, which we outline below. We also direct […]

3 Strategies for Overcoming Faculty Resistance to Active Learning Techniques

Getting faculty on board with active learning is key to improving student outcomes, and incorporating these learning strategies requires buy-in from both instructors and students. EDUCAUSE Review 

Online Options Give Adults Access, but Outcomes Lag

BOSTON — Does online education help cities and states increase postsecondary access and success for the undergraduate students who need it most? No hourlong presentation can reasonably purport to answer that question, and the kind of data that might present a clear yes or no verdict probably don’t exist yet. But Richard Garrett, chief research […]

Waynesboro, BRCC (Blue Ridge Community College) to open distance learning center

WAYNESBORO — The city of Waynesboro is partnering with Blue Ridge Community College to open a distance learning center that would allow area residents to take online Blue Ridge courses at a facility in the center of the city. Blue Ridge President John Downey said the community college has targeted Jan. 1 of next year […]

National Standards for Quality Online Teaching (K-12) Literature Review

This literature review has been conducted to inform the work of the National Standards for Quality Online Teaching revisions, a project led by a partnership between Quality Matters and the Virtual Learning Leadership Alliance. It includes a short summary of the relevant peer-reviewed literature followed by an alphabetical listing of the resources correlated to the […]

An Evaluation of Critical Thinking in Competency-Based and Traditional Online Learning Environments

Non-term, direct assessment competency-based education (CBE) represents a significant re-imagining of the structure of higher education. By regulating students’ progress through the program based on their mastery of tightly defined competencies rather than based on the time spent learning them, this learning environment affords students far greater flexibility than traditional programs. This focus on defined […]

Exploring Best Practices for Online STEM Courses: Active Learning, Interaction & Assessment Design

The purpose of this study was to examine effective design practices for online courses in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields at a large four-year public university in southeastern United States. Our research questions addressed the influence of online design practices on students’ perception of learning and learning satisfaction. An online survey was […]

Perceptions of the Persistent: Engagement and Learning Community in Underrepresented Populations

In an effort to characterize perceptions of learning community and engagement in relation to success for underrepresented populations of online learners at a public institution in southeastern United States, a survey was conducted in Spring 2016. The results of the survey were paired with institutional data to create a baseline engagement and learning community profile […]