August 1, 2008

Distance Education Report - August 1, 2008 - Full Issue PDF
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4 Steps to Just-in-Time Faculty Training
By Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti
Training faculty is always a concern, but particularly where technology is involved. Not only do faculty need to stay current in pedagogical theory and practice, they also need to be able to use the learning management system and other tools effectively in order to deliver the most robust course possible to their students. This is further complicated by the fact that most universities have faculty with a variety of different experience levels and skill sets, both pedagogically and technologically.

Can SRM Keep Your Students Enrolled?
More and more distance ed programs are coming to see that just getting the student enrolled is not enough (and, in fact, just getting the student enrolled is often handled perfunctorily itself.) Many schools still do not track and keep data relating to student progress and success. This is a gap in traditional higher education. It poses a much greater difficulty with online learning.

Using Surveys to Improve Courses, Programs, and Instruction
By By Patti Shank, PhD, CPT
Surveys are often the tool of choice for evaluating online courses and instruction because they are relatively easy to develop and administer. But this ease is truly a double-edged sword because it’s very, very easy to write questions whose answers provide information of little value. For example, consider the following survey question.

The New Learning Environment: It’s More than New Tools
With some regularity we hear about how the online learning environment has changed. Distance educators are in a constant process of trying to keep up. Recently a small group of researchers led by Colleen Carmean the Director of e-Learning in the School of Global Management & Leadership of the New American University travelled to seven different campuses and talked to 200 different faculty, students, IT administrators, librarians, administrative leadership, etc., to get a picture of what was new since 2006.

Newsbriefs
Publishers Take Action against Georgia State University Copyright Infringement Top Ten IT Issues in Higher Education: EDUCAUSE 2008 Survey Results Emerging Technologies for Learning Higher-Education Groups Want Federal Lawmakers to Oppose File-Sharing Measure