Unfortunately, online education, or its include-all moniker “online,” tends to be lined up against face-to-face or classroom instruction, as if the two were gunfighters. Even if in the minds of some one of the parties walks away the victor, that party has more than the usual shoulder or arm wound than that of the winner…
The launch of the new Apple iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus is big in every way if you count numbers. Orders in the first 24 hours are said to have been more than 4 million strong, and according to the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, “Apple’s main manufacturing supplier, Hon…
Here we go again. And there’s more. Corinthian Colleges, after having dashed any academic hopes of its students, is now also accused of predatory lending. That the wake and fiasco continue should come as no surprise, as online education continues to be the equivalent of fast food in many instances–too convenient and advertised with the…
Colorado CO S 114 2014 State University Global Campus Student Access Status: Enacted – Act No. 144 Date of Last Action:* 05/02/2014 – Enacted Author: Todd (D) Topics: Postsecondary, Postsecondary-Community and Junior Colleges, Distance/online/virtual learning Summary: Amends the role and mission of Colorado State University global – campus on-line university to permit baccalaureate degree programs instead of upper-division baccalaureate completion…
This summer I am teaching online, in part because many students prefer to take classes online. Summer is the time for mischief, experimentation and creation—there is just something about that added sunlight, all sorts of plants I know not the names of in bloom everywhere—it just makes you want to try something new. In my…
The rise of online courses—massive and open or just regularly-sized—is one of the major trends in higher education over the last few years. Of course, the rapidly growing access to high speed Internet has been crucial in helping online education spread, but as Julie Vargas explains in the new issue of Academe, today’s online courses…
Colleen Lye and James Vernon, co-chairs of the Faculty Association at the University of California, Berkeley, have a fantastic piece in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education on the threat posed to faculty intellectual property rights, academic freedom, and educational quality by university claims to copyright over faculty-created online course materials. “The Erosion of Faculty Rights”…
I remember how shocked I was upon finding out that some students were taking all of their classes online–while living in the dorms. Then I was dismayed, too, that the source I learned this absurd behavior from did not even try to pull a Captain Renault out of Casablanca and say, “I’m shocked, shocked to find…
FutureofHigherEd.org • #futureofHE • facebook.com/FutureofHigherEd _________________________ The “Promises” of Online Higher Education: Profits With so much national focus on the “promises” of online higher education to expand access and to reduce costs, one truth about online higher education rarely mentioned is that it is big—Very Big—business. Understanding and assessing developments in online higher education require…