New Consortium’s Mission: Improve Liberal-Arts Teaching Online
Four liberal-arts colleges on Monday formed a consortium to share information about their experiments with online education, and more members may soon join in. Wired Campus
Posts Tagged ‘Instructional Systems’
Influencing factors in OER usage of adult learners in Korea
Open Educational Resources (OER) is terminology that refers to educational resources (content and software) distributed through the Internet, free of charge and freely accessible, expanding learning opportunities for adult learners. This terminology first appeared around 2002, although its roots can be traced to the open architecture of the Internet. Until recently, OER development has focused […]
Coursera’s introductory human physiology course: Factors that characterize successful completion of a MOOC
Since Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are accessible by anyone in the world at no cost, they have large enrollments that are conducive to educational research. This study examines students in the Coursera MOOC, Introductory Human Physiology. Of the 33,378 students who accessed the course, around 15,000 students responded to items on the pre-course survey […]
MOOCs and The Silicon Valley Narrative
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have generated considerable media interest, more than other education initiatives such as Open Education Resources (OERs). In this article the author argues that this can be seen as an example of the battle for narrative in open education. MOOCs attracted media interest because they appealed to broader narratives such as […]
Mobile and Accessible Learning for MOOCs
Many modern web-based systems provide a ‘responsive’ design that allows material and services to be accessed on mobile and desktop devices, with the aim of providing ubiquitous access. Besides offering access to learning materials such as podcasts and videos across multiple locations, mobile, wearable and ubiquitous technologies have some additional affordances that may enable new forms […]
The Open Library at AU (Athabasca University): Supporting Open Access and Open Educational Resources
To address challenges that learners, course creators, librarians and academics involved with OER and MOOCs are facing when looking for scholarly materials, Athabasca University Library has initiated the development of the Open Library at AU. This open library is a full library website that provides easy access to open and free resources. Tools and information literacy […]
Capacity-building in open education: an Australian approach
Addressing the gap between global open educational resource (OER) proliferation and the slow adoption of OER and open educational practices (OEP) in Australian higher education, this paper focuses on a capacity-building project targeting academics, academic support staff and educational developers. The conception, design, development, piloting and evaluation of an open, online professional development micro course […]
Just-in-time research: a call to arms for research into mobile technologies in higher education
Mobile technologies are becoming commonplace in society and in education. In higher education, it is crucial to understand the impact of constant access to information on the development of the knowledge and competence of the learner. This study reports on a series of four surveys completed by UK-based medical students (n=443) who received tablet computers […]
Alexandria – A Virtual Repository of Knowledge
Virtual worlds are development platforms, similar to sandbox games where users are able to interact with each other with no predefined goal. Due to immersive visual feedback, these platforms have been successfully used in the past to create lesson plans and materials used for undergraduate and, graduate education as well as for and recreation. To […]
Virtual Teaming and Digital Learning Strategies: Preparing Students for a Global Workplace
Many organizations use technology and social media as the cost-effective, even the preferred, rapid communication and teaming modality. University students must consequently be more than just Facebook ready to meet the greater business needs. They must possess fluency in the selection and use of computer mediated communication and virtual teaming applications. The paper examines the […]