Student Loan Blog : online courses

Cutting-Edge Colleges Deliver Courses Via Cell Phones

Student Loan Girl — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 22:48:00 GMT

In order to reach a more diverse population of learners, several institutions are offering full college course content delivered via a user’s cell phone, reports UniversityBusiness.com (“Cellular Colleges: The Next Small Thing,” February 2009).

“Cellular” courses will be similar to their online counterparts and will include access to self-paced tutorials and student chat rooms, as well as to several other features, educators say.

Mobile education courses are already available at Fukuoka (Kyodo) Cyber University, Japan’s first Internet-based university, which specializes in delivering course content using SoftBank 3G smart phones. The university, which opened in 2007, entices new students to enroll by offering a student’s first course free of charge as long as students use the school’s provider, and pay for all equipment and transmission fees.

Colleges and universities in the United States have also recently begun experimenting with video instruction over personal mobile devices, including Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, which is considering mobile education as part of the school’s new emerging media initiative.

The Louisiana Community & Technical College System is also considering offering several different online courses that could be delivered to students on their iPhone, Google Phone, Blackberry or other mobile devices as a means of expanding students’ access to higher education throughout the state.

“The top barriers in attaining their degrees are geographic access, cost of higher education and scheduling conflicts,” said school system president Joe May. “We are excited to be able to bring a greater level of access to potential students.”

The school system has teamed with AT&T, eCollege and Pearson Custom Solutions to ensure that courses will be optimized for online and mobile delivery and that courses remain compatible with new mobile services and features as they become available.

“This partnership completely changes the future of how online learning is delivered,” said Don Kilburn, CEO of Pearson Custom Solutions. “We don’t just live in an online environment — we live in a mobile environment. This partnership gives working adults in Louisiana the most flexible and reliable working option available- whether it’s on a desktop, laptop, or mobile device.”

Share this post: email this | del.icio.us | reddit

Free Online Global University to Debut This April

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 23:51:00 GMT

This fall, Israeli entrepreneur Shai Reshef will open the world’s first tuition-free internet university called the University of the People, reports The New York Times (“Israeli Entrepreneur Plans a Free Global University That Will Be Online Only,” Jan. 25, 2009).

University of the People — which will operate solely based on open-source courseware, a type of learning tool that has allowed universities all over the globe to post education materials online at no cost to the public — will allow its students throughout the world to access written materials and lectures for thousands of courses via its website.

In lieu of tuition, students will pay enrollment fees of $15 to $50 and exam fees of $10 to $100, both of which will vary depending on the student’s country of origin. And instead of physically attending lectures, students will participate in online study communities and weekly discussion topics and will be asked to submit homework and exams online.

“The idea is to take social networking and apply it to academia,” Reshef told the Times. “The open-source courseware is there, from universities that have put their courses online, available to the public, free.”

With about $5 million in start-up funds, including $1 million of his own capital, Rashef will open the school, initially, to approximately 300 students who will be able to pursue bachelor’s degrees in business administration and computer science. The school will support the students with both paid and volunteer professors, along with librarians and other professional educators that will monitor curriculum and evaluate exams.

In five years, at which time Reshef expects the university to be self-sustaining, Reshef hopes to have increased enrollment to 10,000 students.

Critics Question Plan

Although close to 4 million U.S. students took at least one online course in 2007, according to a survey by the Sloan Consortium, an advocacy group for online learning, online education experts still wonder how Reshef’s new venture will come together.

John Bourne, Sloan Consortium executive director, says, “It’s true that the open courseware movement is pretty robust, so there are a lot of high-quality course materials out there, but there’s no human backup behind them. I’d be interested to know how you’d find and train faculty and ensure quality without tuition money.”

Despite these uncertainties, Reshef, who is currently the chairman of Cramster, an online study community for students, and who offers an extensive entrepreneurial background in the business side of higher education, is convinced that his new venture will be a success.

“We know that online peer-to-peer teaching works,” Rashef said. “Putting it all together, we can make a free university for students all over the world, [to] anyone who speaks English and has an Internet connection.”

Share this post: email this | del.icio.us | reddit

Down Economy May Be Driving Students to Online Education

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:05:00 GMT

As jobs continue to disappear and unemployment soars, large numbers of adult learners may soon be enrolling in online programs, particularly at two-year colleges and for-profit institutions, according to a new online education survey (“Recession May Drive More Adult Students to Take Online Courses,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan. 9, 2009).

These two-year colleges and for-profit institutions, which offer programs tailored to working adults, will likely see the biggest boost in enrollment, but all types of colleges could experience an enrollment surge as more people turn to higher education to gain marketable skills in the recession, revealed the 2008 online education survey by the Sloan Consortium, a non-profit organization working to improve online education.

“A lot of people want to increase their skill levels or get that degree they didn’t have,” said I. Elaine Allen, one of the report’s authors. The threat of losing their job can be as big a motivator for people to get a degree as actually losing their job, Allen told The Chronicle.

She said that the primary motivator for adults turning to online education over a traditional classroom-based education may be one of convenience. “Time-wise, you have the flexibility of logging online and taking the course whenever you want,” Allen said. With Internet -based courses, “you don’t have to leave your house. If you have a family, that’s going to make things much easier for you.”

Over 20 percent of all U.S. students enrolled in higher education were taking at least one online course in the fall of 2007, according to data from the Sloan Consortium. And, The Chronicle suggests, if the recession were to drive more students to take courses online as expected, the percentage of online education students is likely to rise sharply.

Most of that growth will likely come from the two-year and for- profit colleges that have not yet maximized their potential for online enrollment, Allen predicts, while public institutions likely won’t see “huge growth” in Web-based learning. Of all the colleges surveyed, 58 percent said that online courses were critical to their enrollment strategies, and a full 70 percent reported that competition for the growing number of students pursuing an education online is increasing.

Allen said, “For the first time, [schools] are seeing students choose another college for its online program.”

Share this post: email this | del.icio.us | reddit

Provision of Higher Education Act May Force Schools to Spy on Online Students

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:24:00 GMT

Language in the bill, currently before Congress, to re-authorize the Higher Education Act could lead distance-learning institutions to use home-monitoring devices to police their students who take courses online, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (“New Systems Keep a Close Eye on Online Students at Home,” July 25, 2008).

The provision, contained within a single paragraph of the 1,200-page bill, is intended to prevent students enrolled in online programs from cheating. The clause requires providers of online postsecondary programs to prove that the person submitting the online classwork is the student who’s actually enrolled.

Hearing no objections from Congress to the provision, a handful of online colleges are now testing home-monitoring systems that authenticate online test-takers through fingerprinting, watch students in their homes via webcams, and record key strokes on students’ home computers.

Some colleges claim one chief advantage to these types of devices: Students will no longer be required to travel to a distant location where a proctor can oversee them taking the test in person. Instead, students will be able to take tests online in the comfort of their own home, with an installed approved monitoring system acting as an on-site proctor.

A few administrators, however, are concerned that these new technologies, which will are managed by third-party vendors, may not adequately safeguard students’ privacy. “This is taking a step into a student’s private life,” said Rhonda Epper, co-executive director of Colorado Community Colleges Online. “I don't know if we want to extend our presence that far.”

Debates about privacy and institutional intrusions aside, there may be at least one upside: The provision could bring online degrees a greater reputability since the schools would be verifying that their graduates had actually completed the coursework, said John Ebersole, president of Excelsior College, an online institution in Albany, N.Y.

“If it raises confidence and credibility in the eyes of regulators and traditional educators,” Ebersole said, “it’s worth it.”

Share this post: email this | del.icio.us | reddit