The numbers reveal a year-to-year online enrollment increase of 226,375 distance education students–a 3.9 percent increase, up over rates recorded the previous two years. More than 6 million students are now online learners, according to the report.
More than one in four students (29.7 percent) now take at least one distance education course (a total of 6,022,105 students).
Graduate students are twice as likely to take all of their courses online (26 percent) as undergraduate students (12 percent).
The number of students studying on a campus has dropped by almost 1 million (931,317) between 2012 and 2015.
The majority of “exclusively distance” students live in the same state as their institution (55 percent), while 42 percent are studying online at an out-of-state institution.
Public institutions educate the largest proportion of online students (67.8 percent), though more online learners in private institutions attend nonprofit schools than for-profits, according to the data.
And according to LMS provider Docebo, the 2016 world-wide revenue for self-paced online learning products and services (in US$ millions) exceeded $23 million in North America, beating out Europe and even Asia by a large margin.
Going corporate: According to the latest market study by Technavio, the size of the global corporate online learning market is predicted to reach an approximate amount of USD 31 billion in revenue by the end of 2020.
An important component: Within online learning, the LMS market is expected to grow at an incredible rate—a CAGR of 24 percent by 2020.
The biggest growth: Within online learning, the cloud is also growing at a tremendous rate. IT spending is steadily shifting from traditional IT offerings to cloud services, and the aggregate amount of cloud is expected to go from $111 billion in 2016 to $216 billion in 2020.
The Internet of Things (IoT), augmented reality, and advancements in online learning have changed the way universities reach prospective students, engage with their current student body, and provide them the resources they need.
The Internet of Things has opened up a whole new world of possibilities in higher education. The increased connectivity between devices and “everyday things” means better data tracking and analytics, and improved communication between student, professor, and institution, often without ever saying a word. IoT is making it easier for students to learn when, how, and where they want, while providing professors support to create a more flexible and connected learning environment.
Virtual/Augmented Reality
Virtual and augmented reality technologies have begun to take Higher Ed into the realm of what used to be considered science fiction.
95 percent of larger programs (those with 2,500 or more online program students) are “wholly asynchronous” while 1.5 percent are mainly or completely synchronous. About three-quarters (73 percent) of mid-sized programs (schools with between 500 and 2,499 online program students) and 62 percent of smaller programs are fully asynchronous.
The asynchronous nature of this kind of education may explain why threaded discussions turned up as the most commonly named teaching and learning technique, mentioned by 27.4 percent of respondents, closely followed by practice-based learning, listed by 27.3 percent of survey participants.
While the LMS plays a significant role in online programming, the report pointed to a distinct lack of references to “much-hyped innovations,” such as adaptive learning, competency-based education systems, simulation or game-based learning tools. (my note: my mouth run dry of repeating every time people start becoming orgasmic about LMS, D2L in particular)
four in 10 require the use of instructional design support, three in 10 use a team approach for online course design and one in 10 outsources the work. Overall, some 80 percent of larger programs use instructional design expertise.
In the smallest programs, instructional design support is treated as a “faculty option” for 53 percent of institutions. Another 18 percent expect faculty to develop their online courses independently. For 13 percent of mid-sized programs, the faculty do their development work independently; another 64 percent may choose whether or not to bring in instructional design help. (my note: this is the SCSU ‘case’)
Measuring Quality
Among the many possible quality metrics suggested by the researchers, the five adopted most frequently for internal monitoring were:
Student achievement of program objectives (83 percent);
Student retention and graduation rates (77 percent);
Whether you’re flipping your courses, creating videos to help your students understand specific concepts or recording lectures for exam review, these tips can help you optimize your production setup on a tight budget.
1) Speak Into the Microphone
2) Reconsider Whether You Want to be a Talking Head
Record your video and upload it to YouTube. YouTube will apply its machine transcription to the audio as a starting point. Then you can download the captions into your caption editor and improve on the captions from there. Afterward, you can delete the video from YouTube and add it to your institution’s platform.
how the digital medium will foster engagement and enhance learning outcomes.
aware of the implications of having students post content on third-party services (those not provided or hosted by your institution).
Social media usage in the classroom intersects with both FERPA and Copyright Compliance, so keep this checklist handy as you develop your class activity.
Include details about the activity in your syllabus & course description.
Use contracts.
Link to institutional policies.
Use aliases for social media accounts.
Teach your students to use digital media responsibly.
Know where to provide assignment feedback.
Don’t use personal accounts for university business.
Understand the Terms of Service.
Some of the most outstanding findings we found in this report are:
• Despite the prevalence of social networking, online study tends to be a solitary activity: 79% of people choose not to study collaboratively when they are online.
• Students are using online platforms as an additional source to help with difficult subjects Students from non-native English speaking countries are more likely to use online tools for language learning than native English speakers are.
• Learning is lower down the list of priorities for users of mobile devices. Using mobile devices for education is quite low compared to other activities
• There is a strong trend towards visually engaging material , an area in which the offline world simply cannot compete with the online one
AECT-OTP Webinar: Digital Badges and Micro-Credentials for the Workplace
Time: Mar 27, 2017 1:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)
Learn how to implement digital badges in learning environments. Digital badges and micro-credentials offer an entirely new way of recognizing achievements, knowledge, skills, experiences, and competencies that can be earned in formal and informal learning environments. They are an opportunity to recognize such achievements through credible organizations that can be integrated in traditional educational programs but can also represent experience in informal contexts or community engagement. Three guiding questions will be discussed in this webinar: (1) digital badges’ impact on learning and assessment, (2) digital badges within instructional design and technological frameworks, and (3) the importance of stakeholders for the implementation of digital badges.
Dirk Ifenthaler is Professor and Chair of Learning, Design and Technology at University of Mannheim, Germany and Adjunct Professor at Curtin University, Australia. His previous roles include Professor and Director, Centre for Research in Digital Learning at Deakin University, Australia, Manager of Applied Research and Learning Analytics at Open Universities, Australia, and Professor for Applied Teaching and Learning Research at the University of Potsdam, Germany. He was a 2012 Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at the Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education, at the University of Oklahoma, USA
Directions to connect via Zoom Meeting:
Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://zoom.us/j/8128701328
Or iPhone one-tap (US Toll): +14086380968,8128701328# or +16465588656,8128701328#
Or Telephone:
Dial: +1 408 638 0968 (US Toll) or +1 646 558 8656 (US Toll)
Meeting ID: 812 870 1328
International numbers available: https://zoom.us/zoomconference?m=EedT5hShl1ELe6DRYI58-DeQm_hO10Cp
Each student learns differently and assessment is not linear. Learning for different students can be a longer or shorter path.
representation graph:
assessment comes before badges
what are credentials:
how well i can show my credentials: can i find it, can i translate it, issuer, earner, achievement description, date issued.
the potential to become an alternative credentialing system to link directly via metadata to validating evidence of educational achievements.
DB is not an assessment, it is the ability to demonstrate the assessment.
They are a motivational mechanism, supporting alternative forms of assessment, a way to credentialize learning, charting learning pathways, support self-reflection and planning
This means that you’ll no longer have to deal with nerve-wracking copy-and-paste headaches since all formatting preferences from Docs will automatically be applied to the copy in WordPress.
But more importantly: You’ll also be able to edit pieces with partners and colleagues simultaneously and follow the changes they make in real-time.
The nifty integration will be available for any WordPress.com blog as well as any WordPress.org website equipped with the Jetpack plugin. All you have to do to enable it is authorize the add-on with access to your blog by signing up to your WordPress account.
