While some peer schools are hedging their bets that online education is part of the future, Penn is taking a more decentralized approach. On Jan. 19, Apple announced the launch of 100 free college courses through iTunes U — the latest in a recent trend in which schools are opening their classes and educational materials to global audiences online. Peer institutions like Stanford and Yale universities were among those that partnered with Apple. For its part, Penn’s smattering of online learning opportunities is growing from the ground up, through a number of different venues. One of Penn’s oldest offerings in free online education is Knowledge@Wharton, the Wharton School’s online business journal. The publication, which began in May 1999, publishes interviews, lectures and articles that tackle issues in the business world. “The goal is to take the school’s intellectual capital and make it available for free online,” said Mukul Pandya, executive director and editor-in-chief of Knowledge@Wharton.

http://thedp.com/index.php/article/2012/02/online_education_growing_from_bottom_up

The combination of education and cloud computing has created the wind of change to the education system. Today, we live in a world of digital information, which makes us enjoy smart education unhindered by spatial or time restrictions. Smart education or smart learning is construed as the new education system emerging from the development of information and technology. We have come to the age of smart Learning after e-Learning (electronic Learning), m-Learning (mobile Learning), and u-Learning (ubiquitous Learning) developed in the onset of the21st century. Dr. Kwak Duk-hoon, CEO of Educational Broadcasting System (EBS) in Korea and Chairman of Korean Smart Learning Forum, is the pioneer of smart learning and lifelong education. He is the fearless leader who led EBS to become the world’s best education media group and helped the country to learn more about the significance and vision of smart learning.

http://www.koreaittimes.com/story/19513/along-e-learning-and-cloud-computing-comes-advancement-smart-learning

According to Project Tomorrow CEO Julie Evans, “Today’s students have their own ’student vision’ for how they want to use technology for learning. That vision,” she said, “is really a statement of how students want to learn in general.” Speaking at FETC National Conference in Orlando, FL last week, Evans covered data from the 2010 and 2011 editions of the Speak Up Survey, with a specific focus on the use of digital media for learning. The Speak Up surveys include input from hundreds of thousands of teachers, students, parents, and administrators each year. What the data pointed to, she said, is a growing “frustration among students, not just with the lack of technology in their schools, but by the lack of sophisticated use of that technology.”

According to Evans, the data from those surveys indicated that students:

Have a growing interest in social-based learning;

Want to connect with and develop a personal network of expert resources;

Are looking for tools that increase untethered learning; and

Want a digitally rich learning environment, unencumbered by traditional rules.

http://thejournal.com/articles/2012/02/01/digital-learning-what-kids-really-want.aspx

First, MIT announced that it would extend its successful OpenCourseWare initiative and offer certificates to students who complete courses. MITx will allow students to access content for free. But students who wish to receive a certificate will be charged a modest fee for the requisite assessments. The kicker is that the certificate will not be issued under the name MIT. According to the University: “MIT plans to create a not-for-profit body within the institute that will offer certificate for online learners of MIT coursework. Then, Sebastian Thrun, who invited the world to attend his fall semester artificial intelligence course and who ended up with 160,000 online students, announced he had decided to stop teaching at Stanford and direct all his teaching activities through Udacity, a start-up he co-founded that will offer online courses from leading professors to millions of students.

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/02/03/essay-massive-online-courses-not-game-changing-innovation

Online education accounts for an increasing portion of UND’s enrollment, officials there say, and will be an important component as the school develops a new model for ensuring enrollment stays stable. “Online education is very important for our growth opportunities, because if you look at high school demographics, they’re decreasing,” said Lori Reesor, UND vice president for student affairs. “President (Robert) Kelley has said he believes we’re at the right size. Now it’s more about maintaining enrollment and shaping the class by increasing the quality and diversity of our students,” she said. “It’s not just the right number of students but insuring that the students who come here are prepared to be here.”

http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/228255/

It is clear that Andrew Rosen, the chief executive of Kaplan, wants to leave readers of Change.edu with the idea that for-profit colleges are innovative, efficient, and effective in serving people left out by traditional higher education, and that their bad reputation is the result of unfair attacks. The eye-opening, gasp-inducing elements involve Rosen’s descriptions of the intense pressures on company executives to produce quick, huge profits for investors by shortchanging students. “An investor who wants to make a quick hit can, at least theoretically, buy an institution, rev up the recruitment engine, reduce investment in educational outcomes,” and deliver “a dramatic return on investment.”

http://chronicle.com/article/Changeeduthe-Problem/130596/

At our University, the Faculty of Health, Social Care and Education has delivered a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate courses via flexible distance learning for many years. Distance learning can be a lonely experience for students who may feel isolated and unsupported. However e-learning provides an opportunity to use technology to motivate students to interact with each other and their tutors and work together towards common goals. If done properly, this provides distance learners specifically with a sense of learning within a community and therefore enables them to learn more effectively. Five years ago, the Faculty of Health, Social Care and Education started using a virtual learning environment (VLE) to expand and develop our materials and provide a variety of resources to support our students. In the postgraduate Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) course this was further developed by implementing several collaborative learning initiatives where students work together online. The purpose of this was to attempt to improve the student experience of distance learning. The aim of this review is to analyze the effectiveness of three online collaborative tools used in the postgraduate distance learning MRI course and make recommendations for the implementation of similar initiatives throughout health care education.

http://www.eurodl.org/?article=475

This article describes a study on the effects of a self-instruction training programme in communication skills for psychology students at the Open University of the Netherlands in comparison to a fully supervised training. We expected both training programmes to increase students’ knowledge and skills, as well as their self-efficacy and motivation concerning the use of skills. Furthermore we expected that both training programmes would lead to the transfer of these skills to daily life situations one year after training. The results show that almost all expectations were met, and that the effects of the self instructional programme in this study were comparable to those of the fully supervised training. The main conclusion is that it is possible to construct an effective self-instruction programme in communication skills for psychology students in distance education and this method could be promising for communication skills training for others groups.

http://www.eurodl.org/?article=470

The digitalisation of educational communities has increased rapidly in the last decade. Modern technologies transform the way educational leaders such as teachers, tutors, deans and supervisors view and manage their educational communities. More often, educational leaders offer a variety of gateways, guiding the e-learners in their search for finding and understanding information. A new type of leader is required for understanding the needs and requirements of geographically dispersed online learners. This calls for a compassioned kind of leader, able to reconcile the dilemma of high-tech versus hi-touch in the online classroom. This article examines servant-leadership and its implications for e-learning in the 24/7 classroom where community building is key.

http://www.eurodl.org/?article=472

A broad range of institutions, including American Public University System, Community College System of Colorado, Rio Salado College, University of Hawaii System, University of Illinois-Springfield, and the University of Phoenix are participating. Six major for-profits, research universities and community colleges — the sort of group that doesn’t always play nice — are sharing the vault of information and tips on how to put the data to work. “Having the University of Phoenix and American Public University, it’s huge,” said Dan Huston, coordinator of strategic systems at Rio Salado College, a participant. According to early findings from the research, at-risk students do better if they ease into online education with a small number of courses, which flies in the face of widely-held belief in the benefits of full student immersion.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/02/01/using-big-data-predict-online-student-success