Online Educational Delivery Models: A Descriptive View
"Although there has been a long history of distance education, the creation of online education occurred just over a decade and a half ago - a relatively short time in academic terms. Early course delivery via the web had started by 1994, soon followed by a more structured approach using the new category of course management systems.1 Since that time, online education has slowly but steadily grown in popularity, to the point that in the fall of 2010, almost one-third of U.S. postsecondary students were taking at least one course online. Fast forward to 2012: a new concept called Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is generating widespread interest in higher education circles. Most significantly, it has opened up strategic discussions in higher education cabinets and boardrooms about online education. Stanford, MIT, Harvard, the University of California–Berkeley, and others have thrown their support - in terms of investment, resources, and presidential backing - behind the transformative power of MOOCs and online education. National media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and The Atlantic are touting what David Brooks has called "the campus tsunami" of online education.
Unfortunately, a natural side effect of this new interest in education and educational technology is an increase in hype and in shallow descriptions of the potential for new educational models to replace the established system. All too often, the public discussion has become stuck in a false dichotomy of traditional vs. online - a dichotomy that treats all online models as similar and that ignores blended or hybrid approaches. This false dichotomy is even more evident now that discussions are spilling into national media forums. But in fact, as my colleague Molly Langstaff has described, educational technology is interacting with innovative educational courses and programs to create not only new language but also multiple models for delivering education."
(Phil Hill, 1 November 2012, Educause Quarterly)
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MOOCs from Australia Coming to North America
"The University of New England (UNE) in Australia, a leader in online learning and distance education, announced that it will begin researching and pursuing North American partnerships for the deployment of free courses and highly scalable MOOCs. To accelerate the effort, UNE will send representatives to Educause 2012 in Denver, Colorado next week to conduct discussions with interested organizations."
(Peter Rasmussen, 1 November 2012, Gilfus Education Group)
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Marshall McLuhan predicts 'world connectivity'
"We waste too much time racing from home to office, says Marshall McLuhan, an English professor at the University of Toronto who's becoming known internationally for his study on the effects of media. Society's obsession with files and folders forces office workers to make the daily commute from the suburbs to downtown. McLuhan says the stockbroker is the smart one. He learned some time ago that most business may be conducted from anywhere if done by phone. McLuhan's prescient knowledge: In the future, people will no longer only gather in classrooms to learn but will also be moved by 'electronic circuitry.'"
(Marshall McLuhan, 1965)
Medium: Television; Programme: Take 30; Broadcast Date: April 1, 1965; Hosts: George Garlock, Paul Soles; Guest(s): Marshall McLuhan; Duration: 3:25
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
e-learning 1.0: LMSs, VLEs, e-portfolios
"the dominant learning technology employed today is a type of system that organizes and delivers online courses - the learning management system (LMS). This piece of [e-learning 1.0] software has become almost ubiquitous in the learning environment; companies such as WebCT, Blackboard, and Desire2Learn have installed products at thousands of universities and colleges and are used by tens of thousands of instructors and students. The learning management system takes learning content and organizes it in a standard way, as a course divided into modules and lessons, supported with quizzes, tests and discussions, and in many systems today, integrated into the college or university's student information system."
(Stephen Downes, 17 October 2005)
Downes, S. (17 October 2005). "E-learning 2.0." eLearn Magazine, an Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. publication.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
