March 15, 2010

In The News
By way of Ray Schroeder’s Online Learning Update blog.
iPad Revolutionizes Online Continuing Education - Continuing Education Online

Who Ya Gonna Call When a Course Needs Help?
By Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti
Dance is not the first subject that one thinks will translate well to online media, but Gina Sawyer, dance instructor for Richland College in Dallas, Texas has taken her dance appreciation class online and found ways to make the subject work well with distance delivery.

Distance Education Report - March 15, 2010 - Full Issue PDF
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First, Verify Your Own Identity
The recent reauthorization of the federal Higher Education Act (called the Higher Education Opportunity Act, or HEOA) has left schools scrambling for a way to respond to new language mandating that they develop a system for verifying the identity of each online student.

Do Students Want the Sage on the Stage?
By Karen Powers Liebhaber
In this age of decreasing state funding, audio files can be an effective, economical solution to the ever-increasing costs colleges and universities face. Audio files enhance an institution’s online class, and raise the bar in the college’s traditional class.

Monthly Metric: Facts on Faculty Training from the Sloan Survey
By From “Learning on Demand: Online Education in the United States, 2009”
The seventh annual Sloan Survey of Online Learning reveals that online enrollment rose by nearly 17 percent from a year earlier. The survey, a collaborative effort between the Babson Survey Research Group, the College Board and the Sloan Consortium, is the leading barometer of online learning in the United States. Using results from more than 2,500 colleges and universities nationwide, the report finds approximately 4.6 million students were enrolled in at least one online course in fall 2008. But attention was not fixed solely on students. Here is some of what they found about online instructors.