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
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• online student orientation
• open source
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 Christine Mullins |
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Blending In: The Extent and Promise of Blended Education in the United States:Are Blended Courses More Prevalent than Fully Online Courses? Background: With a perception that blended learning is easier to offer than fully online courses, more students at more diversified types of institutions may be taking advantage of these courses. The evidence: Blended courses are not more prevalent than fully online courses. Very similar proportions of schools report offering blended courses as offer online courses, with slightly more citing online offerings than blended. There is also little evidence of growth in blended course offerings. * Only at Baccalaureate institutions, where online education has the smallest penetration rate, are a slightly greater or an equal percent of blended courses offered. * Offerings of blended courses decreased slightly between 2003 and 2005 while online course offerings grew. * There are a slightly larger percent of blended program offerings than online programs across all disciplines. Do Blended Courses Hold More Promise than Fully Online Courses? Background: Perceived by some as a “best of both worlds” approach compared to fully online courses, blended learning may have a higher acceptance and a higher perceived value (closer to face-to-face learning) than online courses. The evidence: Academic leaders do not regard blended courses as holding more promise than fully online courses. This view appears to be true regardless of size and type of school with the only exception being the small number of schools which offer blended courses but not online courses. * Overall, only 38 percent of respondents agreed that “Blended courses hold more promise than online courses” in 2004. This is a decrease from 46 percent agreement in 2003. * Most of the respondents agreeing with the statement were from smaller, private, not-for-profit, and Baccalaureate institutions. * Only schools offering blended but not online courses had a majority likely to agree with this statement and this percentage dropped from 72 percent in 2003 to 68 percent in 2004. Are Blended Courses a Stepping Stone for Institutions on the Way to Fully Online Courses? Background: With faculty less likely to embrace online then face-to-face courses, and with fully developed brick and mortar campuses, are blended courses a good compromise position for the long term, or are these courses just the first step towards online degree programs? The evidence: The answer appears to be that blended courses are not just a stepping stone to offering online courses or programs. There are far more blended courses and programs being offered than would be present if institutions were using them only as a transition to fully online. Schools with established online courses and programs have a smaller percentage of blended courses than schools with no or only a small percentage of courses online. The percentage of reported blended course offerings remained stable from 2002–2005 while the percentage offered online has increased. * Schools report offering an average of 10.6 percent of their course sections online in 2005, up from 6.5 percent in 2003, while the respective percentages for blended offerings shown a steady decline from 2003 (6.8%) to 2005 (5.6%). * The number of institutions that offer blended courses without offering any online courses is very small at private, non-profit institutions (17.1%), public institutions (3.8%), and private, for-profit institutions (6.6%). What is the Consumer Experience and Perception of Online and Blended Delivery Options? Background: Higher Education institutions have been investing in both online and blended courses and programs. Are these decisions supported by consumer preferences? The evidence: The answer is positive, the market for online/blended delivery has a lot of room for growth. Consumer preference for online and blended delivery far exceeds reported experience, and consumer openness to these delivery modes far exceeds preference. * Consumer data does not suggest an endorsement of a particular mode of delivery, but rather reflects both uncertainty as to the inherent value of particular modes and an openness to consider a variety of modes. * The situation is dynamic. As consumer experience grows and becomes more sophisticated, the balance between consumers’ who regard delivery mode as a primary versus secondary consideration may shift. | |
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Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia: |
KQED - Quest:KQED's most ambitious local offering ever, QUEST utilizes all of our media platforms, educational resources and extraordinary partnerships. QUEST includes a half-hour weekly HD television program, weekly radio segments, an innovative website and unique education guides. QUEST's geographic coverage spans from Mendocino to Monterey and from Sacramento to Santa Clara, and focuses on nine content areas: astronomy, biology, chemistry, engineering, environment, geology, health, physics and weather. Web site | |
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National Academic Advising Association (NACADA):An association of professional advisors, counselors, faculty, administrators and students working to enhance the educational development of students. Web Site Standards for Advising Distance Learners (1999) | |
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Who Owns What? Current Policies and Practice Regarding Ownership of Online Courses in Community Colleges: | |
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 Danielle Perry |
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'A Better Pencil':(Sept. 18, 2009) by Serena Golden “In this electronic age, new writing technologies seem to proliferate and evolve with alarming speed -- but of course, people have been coming up with new ways to communicate their thoughts for as long as language has existed at all. Writing itself -- writes Dennis Baron -- was once the object of much suspicion; Plato wrote that it could attenuate human memory, since writing things down would obviate the need to memorize them. In his new book, A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution (Oxford University Press), Baron looks at the history of writing implements and communication technologies, and explores the digital revolution's impact on how we write, how we learn, and how we connect with one another.” . . . Web site |
10 Killer Content Sources for Your iPod Learning Mix:(Oct. 14, 2009) by Jeffrey Cobb, Mission to Learn Web site Here are 10 great ones, in no particular order: Quick and Dirty Tips - Probably best known for the Grammar Girl podcast, Quick and Dirty Tips offers short and snappy content on a range of other topics, like nutrition, public speaking, investing, and even dog training. http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/ LearnOutLoud - I’ve been a fan of The Philosophy Podcast for a while now, but LearnOutLoud has a lot more to offer. In fact, the site claims to have “the Internet’s first directory for podcasts you can learn from.” And LearnOutLoud also has a great selection of learning resources for kids. http://www.learnoutloud.com/ MindBites - I interviewed MindBites CEO Jason Reneau for a Radio Free Learning podcast a while back. His company’s site offers a large and growing collection of video “instructionals” on topics ranging from sewing to calculus to baby sign language. http://www.mindbites.com/ Radio Lingua Network - Radio Lingua offers the popular Coffee Break Spanish and Coffee Break French podcast series as well as “My Daily Phrase” and “One Minute” podcasts for a number of other languages. http://www.radiolingua.com/ourpodcasts/index.html iTunes U (Opens in iTunes) - iTunes U is the place for great free content from top universities and other educational institutions. Apple claims there are more than 200,000 educational audio and video files available. Here are direct links to a few of the participating institutions and organizations. Carnegie Melon University, Oxford University, Open University, Stanford University, Edutopia, and Teacher’s Domain (WGBH/PBS) http://deimos3.apple.com/indigo/main/main.html?v0=WWW-AMUS-ITUNESU070521-N48LX (You will have to have iTunes installed for these to work) Education Podcast Network - The Education Podcast Network bills itself as “an effort to bring together into one place, the wide range of podcast programming that may be helpful to teachers looking for content to teach with and about, and to explore issues of teaching and learning in the 21st century.” Of course, you don’t have to be a teacher to use it! http://epnweb.org/ The Naked Scientists - If you have the slightest interest in science, The Naked Scientists is a site you will want to subscribe to. A project of the BBC, it offers up a continuing stream of interviews with famous scientists along with news and information about science, medicine and technology. http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/ Librivox - Librivox is the source for free audio book content on the Web, and it offers a variety of podcast options. You can pull pretty much any audio book on the site into your iPod, or try out one of these five channels for an automated stream of content: LibriVox Books Podcast, LibriVox Community Podcast, LibriVox Poetry Podcast, LibriVox Short Story Podcast, LibriVox New Releases Podcast http://librivox.org/ TED Talks - I’m continually amazed at the stream of high quality content coming out of the Technology, Entertainment, and Design conference. The Web site is very popular, but you might not be aware that you can subscribe to both a video and an audio version of TED talks through iTunes. http://www.ted.com/talks Teaching Company - I’ve got a bit of a chip on my shoulder when it comes to The Teaching Company. They, along with Amazon and many others, dropped their North Carolina affiliates like a hot potato after the NC Legislature passed a hare-brained new tax law late this summer. Still, if you are willing to pony up the bucks for it, the company offers some pretty amazing, in-depth educational content. “Great courses taught by great professors,” as they put it. http://www.teach12.com/teach12.aspx?ai=16281 | |
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25 Practical Ideas for Using Mobile Phones In The Classroom:(Nov. 20, 2009) by Graham Atwell, Poltydysgu “We have been writing a lot about ideas on how mobile devices, and particularly phones might be used to support learning. But most of this work has been from a somewhat theoretical angle. Now Jenny Hughes has written a great guest blog on the practical work she has been doing on the use of mobiles in schools. I’ve been working with (primary and secondary teachers) on e-learning in the classroom – particularly the use of web 2.0 applications – as the roll out and dissemination of the TACCLE project. Part of this has been looking at the use of mobile phones as learning tools in schools. There seems to be a lot of debate around the technology, the theoretical perspectives, the social dimension and so on but just at the moment the ‘doing’ is engaging me far more than the research. And as I’m always the first to complain about the practitioner – researcher divide, I thought maybe we should contribute by sharing some stuff we are experimenting with in the classroom.” “What follows is some of the output from teachers. Firstly there has been a debate around the feasibility of using mobile telephones in schools; teachers from schools that have banned them outright, teachers from schools where they are allowed and teachers who are actually using them for learning generated a list of For-and-Against arguments. Secondly, there are some practical suggestions for using mobile devices (mainly phones), tried and tested and either contributed by teachers or trialed on the TACCLE course.” . . . Web site | |
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7 Things You Should Know about Google Wave:Educause What is it? Who is doing it? How does it work? Why is it significant? What are the downsides? Where is it going? What are the implications for teaching and learning? “Google Wave is a web-based application that represents a rethinking of electronic communication. E-mail is 40 years old, predating most of the technology that people today take for granted, and the basic model of e-mail remains unchanged. Other forms of electronic communication have emerged, such as instant messaging, chats, blogs, and texting, and many communication tools have also migrated to the cloud rather than running on local campus servers.” “With these trends in mind, Google is developing an application that has elements of existing communication tools but is built around a different model of how communication -- and collaboration -- take place. With Wave, users create online spaces called “waves,” which may include multiple discrete messages and components -- “blips” -- that constitute a running, conversational document. Users access waves through the web, resulting in a model of communication in which separate copies of multiple messages are not sent to different people; instead, the content resides in a single space. People go to a wave to access the content, respond to it, change it, replay it, send it to a blog, or add new material or attachments.” Web site | |
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A Giant Leap and a Big Deal: Delivering on the Promise of Equal Access to Broadband for People with Disabilities:(April 2010) by Elizabeth Lyle, Federal Communications Commission [from the press release, “Today, the Federal Communications Commission issued the agency’s first-ever working paper addressing accessibility and technology issues. Part of a series of working papers released in conjunction with the National Broadband Plan, the paper considers the numerous barriers to broadband usage faced by people with disabilities, including inaccessible hardware, software, services, and web content and expensive specialized assistive technologies. http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-297711A1.pdf ] “There are 54.4 million Americans who have disabilities, and 35 million Americans who have a severe disability.2 For those aged 15 and over, this includes 7.8 million who have difficulty seeing the words in ordinary newsprint; 7.8 million who have difficulty hearing a typical conversation; 2.5 million who have difficulty having their speech understood; 27.4 million who have lower body limitations; 19 million with upper body limitations; and 16.1 million with cognitive, mental, and emotional functioning disabilities.” (2005 US Census Report) . . . “This paper will first consider numerous barriers to broadband usage faced by people with disabilities, including inaccessible hardware, software, and services, and inaccessible web content. It will also identify barriers related to specialized assistive technologies that people with disabilities use to gain access to broadband services as well as barriers faced by specific populations within the disability community. Next, the paper will discuss existing private sector efforts to address these barriers, including the advances made by industry innovation and collaborative efforts. It examines how government grant programs and legal and regulatory measures address these barriers as well. “After identifying existing barriers and efforts, this paper next considers the gaps in current efforts to address accessibility for people with disabilities and the needs that must be met if we are to accelerate the adoption path for people with disabilities. Specifically, the government must • Improve implementation and enforcement of existing accessibility laws; • Gather and analyze more information about disability-specific broadband adoption issues; • Coordinate accessibility policy and spending priorities; • Update accessibility regulations; • Update subsidy programs and ensure the availability of training and support; and • Update its approach to accessibility problem solving.” “Finally, this paper reviews the three broad recommendations from the National Broadband Plan which seek to address the range of disability access concerns and discusses how the recommendations address the needs identified above. The recommendations include: (1) the creation of a Broadband Accessibility Working Group (‘BAWG’) within the Executive Branch; (2) the establishment of an Accessibility and Innovation Forum at the FCC; and (3) the modernization of accessibility laws, rules, and related subsidy programs by the FCC, the Department of Justice (‘DOJ’), and Congress.” Web site |
A Graying Population, a Graying Work Force:(April 24, 2010) by John Leland, New York Times . . . “In an aging population, the elderly are increasingly being taken care of by the elderly. Professional caregivers -- almost all of them women -- are one of the fastest-growing segments of the American work force, and also one of the grayest. A recent study by PHI National, a nonprofit organization that advocates on behalf of caregivers, found that in 2008, 28 percent of home care aides were over age 55, compared with 18 percent of women in the overall work force.” “The organization projects that from 2008 to 2018, the number of direct care workers, which includes those in nursing homes, will grow to 4.3 million from 3.2 million. The percentage of older caregivers is projected to grow to 30 percent from 22 percent.” . . . See the study “Who are Health-care Workers” at http://www.directcareclearinghouse.org/download/PHI%20FactSheet3_singles.pdf Web site |
A Setback for Google?:(May 6, 2010) by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed “In what might be a setback for Google’s effort to put to bed persistent privacy and security concerns among existing and potential higher education e-mail customers, the University of California at Davis has announced that it will not be adopting Gmail for its faculty and staff members due to ‘increased privacy risks that have come to light in recent weeks.’ ” “Outsourcing faculty and staff e-mail to Google might run afoul of the university’s electronic communications policy, said Peter Siegel, the CIO at Davis, and other campus technology officials, in a letter dated April 30. That policy forbids the university from disclosing electronic communications records “without the holder’s consent.” It also proscribes selling or distributing e-communications “that contain personally identifiable information about individuals” to a third party without permission from those individuals.” . . . “Among the 44 percent of colleges that have outsourced their student e-mail, about 70 percent use Google, according to data collected last year by the Campus Computing Project. Only 8 percent of institutions have outsourced faculty e-mail services, but 21 percent are currently considering it, according to the survey. Among larger universities, the percentage approaches a third. Keltner said Google’s share of that market is about the same -- although far fewer institutions have moved their employees on to third-party e-mail clients.” Web site |
Academic Libraries: 2008 First Look:(Dec. 9, 2009) National Center for Education Statistics This report summarizes services, staff, collections, and expenditures of academic libraries in two- and four-year, degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Academic libraries held approximately 102.5 million e-books and about 3.6 million electronic reference sources at the end of fiscal year 2008. Findings include: -- During FY 2008, there were about 138.1 million circulation transactions from academic libraries' general collection. -- Academic libraries reported 93,438 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff working during the fall of 2008. -- Academic libraries spent about $6.8 billion during FY 2008. Web site |
Alternative Uses for Course Management Systems: They Aren’t Just for Classes Any More:(Fall 2009) by Jill Ullmann, Purdue University Calumet “Universities are quickly moving from brick and mortar toward online classroom settings. The online setting provides students with increased accessibility and flexibility to attend classes they would normally be unable to attend. Unfortunately, for those students who never attend classes on campus, many campus resources are not accessible. Students who attend online are often challenged by a lack of access to on-campus resources such as the ability to contact an academic advisor, retrieve forms, obtain timely information, use the writing lab, and technology assistance. Additionally, many adult learners are returning to school to further their education after a long period of time. These students are surprised at their lack of technical skills needed to complete course work. Virtually all courses in the Purdue University Calumet School of Nursing were either hybrids or totally online. Thus the School needed to reach all students equally with student supportive services whether they were attending class on campus or through distant learning.” Web site |
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 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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
Blackboard/Moodle/Sakai - Session Recording Now Available:(Nov. 5, 2009) Educause Stephen Downes writes, “By far the most popular session at EDUCAUSE (at least so far) this discussion on the relative merits of two open source and one commercial learning management system (LMS) is a great listen, especially as they begin to talk about the future, the claim that "the LMS is dead" (or so it has been reported in some of the blogs), personal learning environments and the increasing demand of colleges to focus on outcomes and competencies. Also interesting: "We (Sakai) don't have a financial incentive to own large swaths of the higher education infrastructure." The recording, with slides and video, loads instantly and is beautifully presented.” Link provided by Colleen Luckett. Web site |
Blogs as Web-Based Portfolios Part 2:(May 3, 2010) by Jeff Utecht, The Thinking Stick “Web-Based Portfolios (WBP) can come in all shapes and sizes. There are literally hundreds of programs and ways you can create a WBP. The issue then becomes which way is the right way? That I believe, needs to be determined on a school-by-school or district-by-district basis. The most important idea to keep in mind when choosing a WBP is the flexibility it allows you in embedding content from other parts of the web. There are many amazing Web 2.0 programs that are being used in education and have embed codes that allow you to pull content from their sites and services into your WBP. VoiceThread, YouTube, Flickr, SlideShare, are just a few that students can use to create/manage content and pull that content back into their WBP. In the end, what your WBP needs to be is nothing more than a container for content of any kind or variety.” . . . Web site |
Broadband Internet’s Value for Rural America:(August 2009) by Peter Stenberg, Mitch Morehart, Stephen Vogel, John Cromartie, Vince Breneman, and Dennis Brown, US Department of Agriculture As broadband -- or high-speed -- Internet use has spread, Internet applications requiring high transmission speeds have become an integral part of the “Information Economy,” raising concerns about those who lack broadband access. This report analyzes (1) rural broadband use by consumers, the community-at-large, and businesses; (2) rural broadband availability; and (3) broadband’s social and economic effects on rural areas. It also summarizes results from an ERS-sponsored workshop on rural broadband use, and other ERS-commissioned studies. In general, rural communities have less broadband Internet use than metro communities, with differing degrees of broadband availability across rural communities. Rural communities that had greater broadband Internet access had greater economic growth, which conforms to supplemental research on the benefits that rural businesses, consumers, and communities ascribe to broadband Internet use. Web site |
Can You Hear Us Now? Connecting Minority-Serving Institutions in the West to U.S. Advanced Cyberinfrastructure:(August 2007) Lariat Summit on Minority Institutions and Cyberinfrastructure in the West This white paper is the result of the 2006 Lariat Summit, a forum that convened over 40 leaders from the fields of science, education, and cyberinfrastructure to develop strategies and recommendations for connecting minority-serving institutions in the West to national broadband networks. This document is a first step towards developing both the will and the resources to ensure that minority-serving institutions are among the “connected” institutions in the West. Web site |
Challenge to the Kindle:(July 6, 2009) by Doug Lederman “The slow but inexorable move to electronic textbooks, accelerated by the emergence of e-readers like Amazon's Kindle and the Sony Reader, holds great promise for students who are visually impaired. Digital formats can easily be transferred into audio recordings or texts printed in Braille, avoiding the piecemeal system by which most colleges' disability resource centers turn individual textbooks into versions that are accessible to the blind.” “But instead of welcoming May's news that numerous colleges were experimenting with Amazon's Kindle DX as a way to bring digital textbooks to their students, advocates for the visually impaired are strenuously objecting to it. The National Federation of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind filed a lawsuit last month against Arizona State University, saying that its plan to use the Kindle to distribute books to students is illegal because blind people cannot use the device as currently configured. (The groups also asked the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice to examine the Kindle deployments planned by the five other colleges.) The Kindle DX has built-in technology that translates digital books into audio, but users can get to that feature only through on-screen menus that are not accessible to the blind.” . . . Web site Also see “Lawsuit says ASU Discriminates by Using E-books,” by Melissa Blasius July 2, 2009, 12 News - http://www.azcentral.com/12news/news/articles/2009/07/02/20090702kindlelawsuit07022009-CR.html | |
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Cheating in the Digital Age: Do Students Cheat More in Online Courses?:(Spring 2010) by George Watson, and James Sottile, Marshall University With the assistance of the Internet and related technologies, students today have many more ways to be academically dishonest than students a generation ago. With more and more Internet based course offerings, the concern is whether cheating will increase as students work and take tests away from the eyes of instructors. While the research on academic dishonesty in general is quite extensive, there is very limited research on student cheating in online courses. ;This study of 635 undergraduate and graduate students at a medium sized university focused on student cheating behaviors in both types of classes (on-line and face to face), by examining cheating behavior and perceptions of whether on-line or traditional face-to-face classes experienced greater cheating behaviors. Web site |
Clive Thompson on the New Literacy:(Aug. 24, 2009) by Clive Thompson, Wired Magazine "I think we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilization," she says. For Lunsford, technology isn't killing our ability to write. It's reviving it -- and pushing our literacy in bold new directions. The first thing she found is that young people today write far more than any generation before them. That's because so much socializing takes place online, and it almost always involves text. Of all the writing that the Stanford students did, a stunning 38 percent of it took place out of the classroom -- life writing, as Lunsford calls it. Those Twitter updates and lists of 25 things about yourself add up.” . . . “But is this explosion of prose good, on a technical level? Yes. Lunsford's team found that the students were remarkably adept at what rhetoricians call kairos -- assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across. The modern world of online writing, particularly in chat and on discussion threads, is conversational and public, which makes it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than the asynchronous letter and essay writing of 50 years ago.” . . . Web site | |
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College Receives $250,000 Federal Grant for Mobile Learning Initiative:(Nov. 10, 2009) Thomas Edison State College Thomas Edison State College has recently received a two-year, $250,000 federal grant that will be used to accelerate the deployment of a new course delivery system that utilizes cloud computing technologies and is designed to increase access and minimize technical issues for adults earning a college degree. The grant, awarded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), will enable the college to develop 40 courses over the next two years that will be delivered entirely via flash drives that contain similar structure and functionality of the college’s typical 12-week, asynchronous online courses but without the need for a constant online connection. For these new courses, students will need an Internet connection only to submit assignments and participate in online discussions. The remainder of course work can be completed offline. Web site |