Growth of Distance Learning at Community Colleges

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that according to an Instructional Technology Council study published in March 2010, enrollment in distance learning at community colleges has increased from 11% in the 07-08 academic year to 22% in 08-09. The article suggests enthusiasm of community colleges for distance learning, the economic downturn, and enrollment efforts as possible reasons for the growth.

Eighty Percent of College Faculty Using Social Media

According to a recent study entitled "Social Media in Higher Education" conducted by the publisher Pearson, more than eighty percent of faculty are using social media and half of those are using social media for teaching purposes. The study also offers some additional interesting data such as 30% of the faculty polled use social media with their students and 52% use video, podcast, blogs, and wikis as part of their classes.

Obama's Push for Online Education

In this article I ran into from the Chronicle of Higher Education, Marc Perry reports on a plan that's emerging from the Obama administration to provide colleges with access to "open" online classes for which the government would potentially fund the development. Colleges (and there seems to be a special indication of community colleges in particular) could repackage and add value to these classes by providing the actual online interaction and instruction to the students while still keeping costs affordable. There's also the suggestion that a community college or consortia of community colleges could house the project's development. Also included in the article is a broader discussion of the need for change from the current model of higher education and how online education can prove a better use of an instructor's time and a way to better tailor to the learning needs of students.

Teaching Online Classes from a War Zone

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting article about Cheryl J. Wachenheim, a North Dakota State University instructor of agribusiness and applied economics, who chose to continue teaching an online economics class while on active duty as a captain in the Minnesota Army National Guard stationed in Balad, Iraq. She comments on the challenges and benefits of teaching and interacting with her students from a war zone. We often think about the benefits that online teaching and technology extend in terms of flexibility to students, but it's also interesting to think about the possibilities online learning can present to educators and the challenging circumstances in which online learning can still prevail.

College Technology Index

Peter Schilling, Director of IT at Amherst College compiled a list of data which paints an interesting picture of technology trends and use on his campus. It gives an interesting glimpse into the way college students are using various technologies. You can also check out his 2008 index as a point of comparison.

Lessons Learned from the Global Campus

Inside Higher Education has an interesting article about the demise of the University of Illinois Global Campus online education, degree-granting, for-profit project. It sounds like the model they embraced - to take course content crafted by experienced on campus faculty and have less experienced, less expensive faculty teach that content - was at the heart of the problem. One of the commenters in the article, Nicholas C. Burbules, a Urbana-Champaign educational policy professor, spoke about how online education is not just a different mode of delivery of on-campus course content. It sounds like the university is now moving in the direction of examining current successful online programs and building those programs into something bigger. This is something to consider when building distance and online classes - instead of just thinking about taking curriculum that works in the in-class environment and delivering it virtually, perhaps this points in the direction of considering what instruction has proved very sucessful (maybe even more sucessful than in the physical classroom) and how can we build up the strength of and expand online learning from those examples.

Tech-free Classes?

NPR has an interesting article about Jose Bowen who is a Dean at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Contrary to how it may sound, he is not actually anti-technology when it comes to teaching. In fact, he has created and uses online games as a way of teaching music history to his students. Bowen is advocating an inversion of current teaching models (such as lecturing) in which instructors wait until students enter the classroom in order to introduce them to class materials and content. Bowen advocates using technology to familiarize students with content before coming into the classroom and then use the classroom time to interact directly with the students, rather than lecturing. This may be a really useful way to structure classes at ECC in order to take advantage of the technology we have available while freeing up precious class time for more interactive and collaborative work.

eBooks for College and Universities for CHEAP!

Lets face it books are expensive and in the current economy the prices of text books for college is astronomical. In comes a company called CourseSmartwhich allows students and teachers to purchase ebooks at a much lower price than those found at your schools book store. The best part about it is that they are available online any time. It allows you to enter notes, bookmarks, and has a handy search tool. There are currently 7000 book titles in 900 course areas and 100 disciplines and growing.

CourseSmart LLC has content from some of the leading textbook publishers today including:

* Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishing Group
* Cengage Learning
* CQ Press
* Elsevier
* F.A. Davis & Company
* John Wiley & Sons
* Jones & Bartlett Publishers
* McGraw Hill Higher Education
* Nelson Education
* Pearson
* Sage Publications
* Sinauer Associates
* Taylor & Francis
* Wolters Kluwer Health

CourseSmart came out with an iPhone application, check out the video below to see a demo: