Here is an extensive list of resources on various aspects of distance learning.The best way to find information on these or any other topics is to conduct a search using the search tool below. You should also visit our site Journals, Links and Resources for more resources. Categories include:
• academic advising
• academic resources - business,
humanities, math, sciences,
social science
• accessibility issues
• accreditation
• best practices
• blended/hybrid learning
• broadband
• career and technical education
• case studies
• cheating and plagiarism
• computer software
• copyright and fair use
• corporate e-learning
• costs for distance learning
• course management
• the digital divide
• digital libraries and learning object repositories• effectiveness of e-learning
• e-books
• e-portfolios
• faculty compensation and support
• faculty training and education
• gaming and simulations
• Higher Education OpportunitiesAct (HEOA Authentication)
• instructional design
• intellectual property issues
• interactivity and teaching online
• K-12 technology
• marketing
• national data and statistics
• online student orientation
• open source
• quality assessment
• rural distance education• science labs/courses
• second life
• security
• social networking
• statewide virtual colleges
• strategic and policy plans
• student retention
• student services
• students and technology
• technologies
• testing and assessment
• Twitter
• videoconferencing/ITFS
• Web design
• Web tools
• wireless
• wikis
• women and the Web
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American Association of University Professors: | |
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American English Dialect Recordings:The Center for Applied Linguistics Collection The American Memory Project The Center for Applied Linguistics Collection contains 118 hours of recordings documenting North American English dialects. The recordings include speech samples, linguistic interviews, oral histories, conversations, and excerpts from public speeches. They were drawn from various archives, and from the private collections of fifty collectors, including linguists, dialectologists, and folklorists. The survey's documentation covers social aspects of English language usage in different regions of the United States. It reveals distinctions in speech related to gender, race, social class, education, age, literacy, ethnic background, and occupational group (including the specialized jargon or vocabulary of various occupations). The oral history interviews are a rich resource on many topics, such as storytelling and family histories; descriptions of holiday celebrations, traditional farming, schools, education, health care, and the uses of traditional medicines; and discussions of race relations, politics, and natural disasters such as floods. Web site |
An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube: | |
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An Institutional Overview: Factors Influencing Faculty Participation in Distance Education in Postsecondary Education in the United States: An Institutional Study:(1998) by Kristen Betts. An extensive survey of the factors influencing George Washington University faculty to participate (or not participate) in distance education. (For her dissertation report see UMI Dissertation Services, Report #9900013, $36/$57.50) Web Site | |
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An Instrument to Assess Online Facilitation:The "Assessing Online Facilitation" instrument (AOF) is for online course facilitators to objectively evaluate their facilitation for strengths and areas for improvement. Facilitators may choose to offer the AOF to others to guide a peer evaluation of their performance in the online classroom. The AOF recognizes the different roles of an online facilitator, as outlined by Berge (1995), Hootstein (2002), and others. -- Pedagogical: Guiding student learning with a focus on concepts, principles, and skills. -- Social: Creating a welcoming online community in which learning is promoted. -- Managerial: Handling organizational, procedural, and administrative tasks. -- Technical: Assisting participants to become comfortable with the technologies used to deliver the course. Web site |
An Online Fraternity:(April 30, 2010) Inside Higher Ed "At the Florida Institute of Technology’s newest fraternity, you don’t rush -- you log in. Theta Omega Gamma, created this year by a sophomore, Darrek Battle, exists exclusively online, serving a membership of 24 fully online students. According to Battle and the faculty adviser Vicky Knerly, that’s a first. 'When I started school I was thinking 'Are there any fraternities out there accepting online students?' and I couldn’t find any,' Battle told Inside Higher Ed. So, he started his own. Theta Omega Gamma serves all the functions of a normal fraternity, Knerly says -- 'except for going out together and drinking.' But that is not Theta’s m.o. anyway; it is a service fraternity, not a Greek fraternity. And even if its members -- which include men and women -- cannot convene for service projects, they can coordinate, through chat room meet-ups, efforts to volunteer for national charitable organizations in their own communities. As for the social side, Battle says he is trying to generate interest in helping online students at other institutions build their own chapters. And he is still working on figuring out how to simulate the camaraderie of a normal fraternity in an online environment. 'It’s been kind of hard to come up with ideas like that,' he says. 'So I think for now we’re just going to go with the flow.' " Web site |
Analysis: Games Create ‘Passion Communities’ For Learning:“Professor James Gee kicked off the 4th Games, Learning, and Society Conference in Madison, Wisconsin with a talk entitled “Beyond Games & the Future of Learning”, citing titles from Portal to World Of Warcraft to explain why games are uniquely suited to create ‘passion communities’ where learning can thrive. . . . Gee sees the current U.S. educational system as inadequate to the task of addressing the problems of an increasingly complex world. He stated that “21st century learning must be about understanding complex systems,” and he believes many video games do a better job at this than the antiquated sender-receiver teaching model that dominates American classrooms.” . . .Website | |
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Any Time, Any Place, Any Path, Any Pace: Taking the Lead on e-Learning Policy: | |
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Apple iPad's Tablet Competition Drop Like Flies, E-Book Readers Next:(April 30, 2010) by David Morgenstern, ZDNet “Less than a month following the launch of Apple’s iPad tablet device and a day before the release of the 3G-capable version on Friday, Microsoft announced that it has dropped plans for the Courier, the tablet that many pundits said would be an iPad killer. Oops, some wishful thinking. Other so-called “hot” tablets are now history. Certainly, it’s just a question of time before e-book vendors to start dropping out of the race soon.” . . . “And on Thursday there’s the word that Hewlett-Packard killed its Slate tablet computer that was scheduled to run Windows 7. In my Wednesday post about the Palm-HP buyout, I mentioned that Microsoft’s partners had no confidence in its mobile strategy or technology. Each day, we see further evidence of its failures. The runaway success of the iPad is causing all the makers of tablet hardware to reevaluate their chances. Microsoft’s lackluster technology just makes the decision easier.” . . . Web site |
Apple: One Million iPads Sold:(May 3, 2010) by John Paczkowski, The Wall Street Journal “28 days. That was all it took for Apple (AAPL) to sell one million iPads. In a statement issued this morning, the company said it hit that milestone last Friday -- the day the iPad 3G went on sale. ‘One million iPads in 28 days -- that’s less than half of the 74 days it took to achieve this milestone with iPhone,’ CEO Steve Jobs said. ‘Demand continues to exceed supply and we’re working hard to get this magical product into the hands of even more customers.’ “ Web site |
Applying Adult Learning to the Online Classroom:(2003) by Barbara A. Frey and Susan Webreck Alman. Web Site | |
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Apprehending the Future: Emerging Technologies, from Science Fiction to Campus Reality:. . . “Deciding which technologies to support for teaching and learning — and how to support them — depends, first, on our ability to learn about each emerging development. Selecting a platform without knowing what is coming right behind it can be risky. Similarly, it is folly to grasp onto a technology without seeing the variety of ways that the technology can actually be used. If William Gibson was right – ‘the street finds its own uses for things’ — then academic computing needs to be sure of its ‘street smarts.’ “1 “But trying to grapple with what comes next is a deep problem. Doing so is partly a matter of science fiction, which consists, after all, of the stories we tell about the future. Doing so is also an issue of complexity, since each practice, or device, or network, or application comes embedded in a nest of other practices, or devices, or networks, or applications. Emerging technologies are a matter not only of qualitative challenge but also of sheer quantitative overload. Web 2.0, gaming, wireless and mobile devices, virtual worlds, even Web 3.0 in all its unrealized potential — each churns out new developments daily and connects with other domains to ramp up the problem still further.” . . . | |
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Architectures for Collaboration: Roles and Expectations for Digital Libraries:(March/April 2008) by Peter Brantley for Educause Review. Libraries are successful to the extent that they can bridge communities and can leverage the diversity of the quest, the research, and the discovery. By building bridges among various sectors, libraries will be able to define themselves in the next generation. Web site | |
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Are MMORPGs “Addictive”?:“In our discussions of violence associated with video game play, we’ve frequently noted that there appear to be different effects depending on the type of video game. Some games are more violent than others, and some games reward violence while others discourage it. All this has an impact in terms of real-world behavior and attitudes. Some games have positive effects.” “One type of game — one of the most popular types, in fact — hasn’t been studied nearly as much as the traditional arcade-style game: massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPGs. One of the studies of this type of game seemed to find that players weren’t more aggressive because the games foster cooperation between players.” Website | |
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Are Teacher Training and Compensation Keeping Up with Institutional Demands for Distance Learning?:(1999) by Gerald Dickinson, David Agnew, and Reita Gorman. A look at how instructors view distance education and whether they felt they received sufficient training to adjust curriculum and instructional design to distance learning. Includes a look at effects on workload and compensation, and whether teaching loads are still being measured in traditional ways. (Cause/Effect) Web Site | |
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Are Your Online Students Really the Ones Registered for the Course? Student Authentication Requirements for Distance Education Providers:“Are Your Online Students Really the Ones Registered for the Course? Much attention has been focused on the accountability, student learning outcomes, transfer of credit, and illegal file sharing provisions of the two related bills that have moved through the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives to amend and extend the provisions of the 1965 Higher Education Act (S. 1642 and H.R. 4137). One of the provisions that appears in both versions should be of particular interest to institutions and programs that offer distance education.” “The proposed legislation requires ‘an institution that offers distance education to have processes through which the institution establishes that the student who registers in a distance education course or program is the same student who participates in and completes the program and receives the academic credit.’ “ “The current language casts a broad and loosely defined obligation on distance education programs, raising questions about the perceived “problem” being targeted. Is the provision aimed at stopping unaccredited diploma mills? Would the provision apply to just fully online distance education courses and programs? Does the provision aim to address student cheating and, if so, is it predicated on an assumption that cheating occurs more frequently or more easily in a web-based learning environment than in a large lecture setting?” . . . Website | |
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ArtsConnectEd:ArtsConnectEd is an interactive Web site that provides access to works of art and educational resources from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Walker Art Center for K-12 educators, students, and scholars. There are over 100,000 images, texts, audio, video, and interactive resources available to visitors to the site. Art Finder, ArtsConnectEd’s searchable environment, is where users can browse the museums’ digitalized items including Works of Art, Texts, Audio and Video, and Interactive Resources. Art Collector empowers users to save, customize, present, and share items in Art Collector Sets. A newly added feature is "Ask an Educator", which allows users to ask questions of the museum educators at both the Institute and the Walker Art Center. Web site |
Assessing Teacher Presence in a Computer Conferencing Context:(2001) by Terry Anderson, Liam Rourke, D. Randy Garrison, and Walter Archer. This paper presents a tool developed to assess teaching presence in online courses that use computer conferencing. Web Site | |
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Assessment in Online Distance Education: A Comparison of Three Online Programs at a University:(March 2008) by Nari Kim, Matthew J. Smith, and Kyungeun Maeng. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether or not the principles of assessment in online education are reflected in the assessment activities used by the developers and administrators of actual online distance courses. Three online distance education programs provided at a large mid-west university were analyzed; the School of Continuing Studies – undergraduate distance program, the School of Business – distance MBA program, and the School of Education – distance graduate program. The results of the study showed that the assessment activities of online distance courses do not strictly follow the principles suggested in the literature. Web site | |
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Assessment Is Widespread:“A study being released today by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (http://www.aacu.org/membership/membersurvey.cfm) finds that in fact assessment has been well accepted for years at most colleges, and is widespread, complete with learning outcomes. What isn’t widespread and should be, the study says, is communication with students about curricular goals and how the colleges measure them. And what also isn’t widespread (and this doesn’t bother many of those surveyed) are national comparisons. Much of the activity on assessment and learning outcomes takes place at the departmental level, the survey found.” Among the key findings: - 78 percent reported having a “common set of intended learning outcomes” for all undergraduates. These included such skills as writing, critical thinking, quantitative reasoning, oral communication, intercultural skills and so forth. Knowledge areas are also frequently cited and include humanities, social sciences, mathematics and global culture. - 72 percent are assessing learning outcomes across the curriculum, and most that don’t already do so plan to begin soon.” - Most assessment goes on at the departmental level, although almost half of colleges assess in some way at both the departmental level and in general education. - A variety of measures — many of them specific to departments or even to individual students — are used in assessment. More than one third of colleges report using “capstone” projects — designed to sum up an academic program — or student surveys. - E-portfolios are gaining in popularity, with 57 percent of colleges using them in some form, but only 42 percent report that they are part of assessment efforts. - The percentages of colleges reporting the use of standardized tests of general knowledge and general skills are low — 16 percent and 26 percent respectively. - Only 5 percent of those surveyed said that they thought all students understood the intended learning outcomes. And when the bar for answering that question in the affirmative is lowered — to only a majority of students — the figure goes up, but only to 37 percent. Website | |
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Association Government Pages:• American Library Association Washington Office Hotline • Association of America's Public Television Stations • The Benton Foundation | |
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Asynchronous Discussion in Support of Medical Education:(2003) by Martin Oliver and Graham P. Shaw. An exploration of the factors that encourage and inhibit student participation in asynchronous discussion. Evaluates student postings to an discussion group by content analysis. Web Site | |
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Attention Literacy:“I opened my first class session this semester by projecting the word ATTENTION on a screen and telling my students that class begins when they turn off their telephones, close their laptops, and shut their eyes for sixty seconds. … I wasn’t trying to control them. I was trying to draw their attention to how little control any of us seem to have over where we let the screens on our laps and in our pockets lead our thoughts.” . . . “The point of this story isn’t to get everyone to pay attention to me or professors in general – it’s that I want my students to learn that attention is a skill that must be learned, shaped, practiced; this skill must evolve if we are to evolve. The technological extension of our minds and brains by chips and nets has granted great power to billions of people, but even in the early years of always-on, it is clear to even technology enthusiasts like me that this power will certainly mislead, mesmerize and distract those who haven’t learned – were never taught – how to exert some degree of mental control over our use of laptop, handheld, earbudded media.” Website | |
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Authors Unbound Online:(April 26, 2010) by Virginia Heffernan, New York Times “In this time of Twitter feeds and self-designed Snapfish albums and personal YouTube channels, it’s hard to remember the stigma that once attached to self-publishing. But it was very real. By contrast, to have a book legitimately produced by a publishing house in the 20th century was not just to have copies of your work bound between smart-looking covers. It was also metaphysical: you had been chosen, made intelligible and harmonious by editors and finally rendered eligible, thanks to the magic that turns a manuscript into a book, for canonization and immortality. You were no longer a kid with a spiral notebook and a sonnet cycle about Sixth Avenue; you were an author, and even if you never saw a dime in royalties, no one could ever dismiss you again as an oddball.” “But times have changed, and radically. Last year, according to the Bowker bibliographic company, 764,448 titles were produced by self-publishers and so-called microniche publishers. (A microniche, I imagine, is a shade bigger than a self.) This is up an astonishing 181 percent from the previous year. Compare this enormous figure with the number of so-called traditional titles -- books with the imprimatur of places like Random House -- published that same year: a mere 288,355 (down from 289,729 the year before). Book publishing is simply becoming self-publishing.” . . . Web site |
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Background Discussion of Copyright Law and Potential Liability for Students Engaged in P2P File Sharing on University Networks:(August 2003) by Michael Remington, Esq., for the Education Task Force of the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities. Includes a discussion of institutional liability vis a vis students that use campus networks for music file swapping. Web Site | |
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Background Paper on e-Portfolios:May 2008, National symposium on e-portfolios | |
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Balancing Student Privacy and School Safety: A Guide to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act for Colleges and Universities:(October 2007) Department of Education. U.S. Secretary of Education Spellings has announced the availability of new brochures that provide guidance on the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to enable institutions to better balance students' privacy rights with safety concerns. Three brochures -- for K-12, postsecondary and parents are available. Web site | |
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BBC: Learning English:“This clever website from the BBC aids people learning English, by offering help in the form of ‘Words in the News’, ‘Quizzes’, videos via YouTube, and English ‘makeovers’ in ‘General and Business English’. ‘Words in the News’, ‘The Teacher’, and ‘Keep Your English Up to Date’ help learners with their ‘Grammar, Vocabulary and Pronunciation’. In the ‘Quizzes’ section there are several different types, including ‘Quiznet’, ‘Crossword’, ‘Beat the Keeper’, and ‘Exam Skills’. None are so long that learners will get bored or frustrated. Visitors who teach English or English as a Second Language will find the ‘For Teachers’ section loaded with activities that accompany the many different features on Learning English. In the ?Downloads? section on the far right hand side of the page, learners can get the past seven days of audio, video, and text to take away. ‘Talk About English’ and ‘Ask About English’ are regular features of the site, and can be accessed on the week's schedule at the bottom of the homepage.” – from the Scout Report Web site |
Becoming a "Communal Architect" in the Online Classroom Integrating Cognitive & Affective Learning for Maximum Effect in Web-Based Learning:(2003) Research demonstrates immediacy or pro-social behaviors correlate with affective and cognitive learning in the face-to-face classroom. Early findings suggest similar results may be obtained in the online setting. Understanding how to build and manage a positive social dynamic can encourage knowledge construction in ways that extend learning in the online classroom. Web Site | |
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Best Online Instructional Practices: Report of Phase I of an Ongoing Study:(April 2004) by Morris Keeton. The rapid growth of online instruction promises that online instruction may become the largest source of ongoing higher education. This study examines how best practices in online instruction are the same as, or different from, best practices in face-to-face (F2F) instruction. Web Site | |
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