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In This Issue Current Issue Archives
June 15, 2006
| Distance Education Report - June 15, 2006 - Full Issue PDF … |
| Course Evaluation Made Simple Quality assurance in distance education is largely a matter of developing a good rubric, say the creators of the Quality Matters process from Maryland Online, a consortium of 14 two-year colleges and five senior institutions. Quality Matters originated with a Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) grant, and it has since won the 2005 WCET Outstanding Work (WOW) Award. It has been adopted by institutions in eight states as a means of assuring continuous quality improvement in online programs. |
| Ask Naj Dear Naj We have very high quality distance learning programs at my institution, but as far as I can tell we’re only average in student persistence and retention. I know that retention is often linked to student services, and I wonder if we’re doing all we can in that department. Is there a way to measure how good and how effective our student services are? Metrics-minded |
| Keeping the Books: Keeping Track of Costs and Revenues Keeping the books for a distance education program is a job that comes with its own unique set of problems. Since the beginning of online degree programs, questions have arisen about just what kind of fiscal entity a distance education program really is. Is it another academic department? Is it a separate college or school? Do its revenues flow back into the institutions, or is it a self-enclosed, self-supporting entity? |
| Five Simple Rules for Creating e-Learning with a Small Team By Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti In 2003, Mona Meyer, director of instructional design at Savannah (Ga.) College of Art and Design (SCAD) found herself in an unenviable yet not uncommon position. SCAD had set a goal of developing fully online programs to serve students at a distance. Each SCAD course represents 10 weeks (or 50 hours) of instruction; consists of “lecture,” discussion, assessment, and hands-on project work components; meets accreditation requirements; and uses rich media to support a variety of learning styles. The catch was that the team designated to do this included precisely three people. |
| What New Media and Technologies are Doing to Education For as long as computers have served as media platforms, faculty have experimented with new instructional opportunities. What is new and remarkable now is the shift to student involvement in media development. In many cases, faculty require this expansion of student skills through the class assignments and instruction they give or arrange in conjunction with their teaching. But there is a growing trend for students to initiate the foray into audio and video, approaching faculty for permission to include them in written work and, occasionally, in place of written work. |
