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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Mainstream Gen Y isn’t Buying Into Web 2.0:“Generation Y practically invented social media. . . . Well, things changed. Facebook opened up, Second Life created a virtual world for everyone to live in, LinkedIn connected all the older white-collar professionals, Twitter jumped on the scene and let all the narcissists scream, “Look at me,” and Facebook followed the trend with their new redesign.” “But Generation Y is not inventing the new web. Older people are. The new web is all about hyper-connectivity, real-time updates, and living your life online. And mainstream twenty-somethings aren’t buying into it.” . . . Website | |
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Mainstream Video Conferencing: A Developers Guide to Distance Multimedia:(1997) by Joe Duran and Charlie Sauer. Explains "group" and “desktop” videoconferencing. Explores potential applications, such as everyday meetings, recruiting, tech support, manufacturing, classrooms, medical clinics, and entertainment. Discusses the challenges of multipoint videoconferencing. (Amazon, $29.71) | |
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Mainstreaming Distance Learning Into the Community College:(2004) by Dr. Linda M. Thor and Carol Scarafiotti. Rio Salado, a Maricopa Community College in the Phoenix metropolitan area, has been recognized as a national model for online teaching and learning. This article details how Rio Salado has mainstreamed distance learning throughout the entire college. Web Site | |
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Making a Wireless Network Happen:(2001) The Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health has had a wireless network since 1997. Ross McKenzie, director of information systems, and Jon Garvin, assistant director of information systems for operations, share the story of the installation, development, and migration of the network and provide some insight into lessons learned and future plans for the school. Web Site | |
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Making Connections: Dimensions of Student Engagement:(November 2009) CCSSE Web site, Community College Survey of Student Engagement This report focuses “on the importance of relationships among students, faculty, and staff, and with institutions themselves: how they evolve, the value they add, and the importance of building and sustaining these critical connections. The report offers data about the quality of community college students’ educational experiences and describes how colleges across the country are intentionally making connections with students online, in the classroom, on campus, and beyond.” “Increasingly, colleges are using technology to reach out to students, and Making Connections offers new primary research on the use of Web 2.0 social networking tools. Additionally, recent data show significant growth in the use of online courses and support services, including online developmental education classes, orientation, and tutoring. While technology use was once the province of younger students, the age gap has closed to within one percentage point -- upwards of 66 percent of all students now use technology to collaborate on meaningful educational activities.” “Part-time enrollment is an acknowledged risk factor for low student engagement and dropping out of college. Making Connections also explores the role part-time status of faculty plays, focusing on the institutional approaches needed to support adjunct faculty success. The report also discusses the challenges colleges face as they work to foster connections among students, faculty, and staff and offers a self-assessment checklist for colleges: ‘Is Your College a Connected College?’ “ Web site Executive Summary: http://www.ccsse.org/publications/national_report_2009/CCSSE09_execsum.pdf |
Making the Election Video: Behind the Scenes:by Leelefever, Sept. 2, 2008 “People often ask for a look at how we make the videos. When we were putting together the "Electing a US President" video, I made a special point to take photos of the process. Here's how it works: Every video starts with a script. If there is "secret sauce" it happens in writing the script because the script drives the video. We use Google Docs to collaborate until we feel like the script is close to finished. Then, we start looking at a thumbnail storyboard.” . . . Website | |
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Making the Grade: Online Education in the United States:(2006) This fourth annual report on the state of online learning in U.S. higher education, supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group in partnership with the College Board, is available online. The study is based on responses from more than 2,200 colleges and universities. Web site | |
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Managing Virtual Adjunct Faculty: Applying the Seven Principles of Good Practice:(2005) by Maria Puzziferro-Schnitzer. This paper offers best practices for the support and management of online adjunct faculty within the framework of the Seven Principles for Best Practice. Web Site | |
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Marketing Distance Learning Programs and Courses: A Relationship Marketing Strategy:(2005) by Najmuddin Shaik. The author describes the relevance of relationship marketing paradigm to student recruitment and retention in distance learning programs. Web Site | |
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MarylandOnline: A Gap Analysis of Online Student Services: Report on Administrator and Student Surveys:(December 2002) This survey of 22 administrators and 622 students examines the ability of Maryland colleges to deliver online student services and recommends remedies for gaps between current and optimal capabilities. Web Site | |
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Mathematics Tutorials and Problems (with applets):Free tutorials to help explore and gain a deep understanding of math topics. The site includes java applets to investigate graphs of functions, equations, and algebra; calculus tutorials and problems; trigonometry tutorials and problems for self tests. Includes math problems for self tests, analytical tutorials with examples and detailed solutions. Web site | |
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Measuring Learning Effectiveness: A New Look at No-Significant-Difference Findings:(2000) Ernest H. Joy II and Federico E. Garcia. This paper outlines the opposing philosophical positions in the debate on whether delivery media influences learning outcomes. The authors illustrate the inadequacy of the methodologies and conclusions of several representative media comparison studies and derive critical design considerations for those who evaluate or conduct this type of research. Web Site | |
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Measuring the Importance of Collaborative Learning for the Effectiveness of ALN: A Multi-Measure, Multi-Method Approach:(2000) Starr Roxanne Hiltz, Nancy Coppola, Naomi Rotter, Murray Turoff and Raquel Benbunan-Fich. Interviews of experienced online faculty describing their pedagogy and perceptions of whether students learned more, less, or about the same as, the students in their traditional sections. When students are actively involved in online collaborative learning, the outcomes can be as good as, or better than, those for traditional classes. When individuals are simply receiving posted material and sending back individual work, the results are poorer than in traditional classrooms. Web Site | |
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Media Characteristics and Online Learning Technology:(2004) by Patrick J. Fahy. This paper offers learning models and tasks. Web Site | |
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Media College.com: | |
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Meet Go, Google’s New Programming Language:(Nov. 11, 2009) by Scott Gilbertson, Monkey_Bites “Google has released a brand-new programming language it hopes will solve some of the problems with existing languages such as Java and C++. The language is called Go, and it was released under an open source license Tuesday. Google is no stranger to the open source world. The company has released the underlying code for several of its tools and services under open source licenses over the years. Just last week, Google released its Closure JavaScript tools for building Ajax web apps. And now Google has considerably upped its investment in free software with the release of Go, which is an entirely new programming language.” . . . Web site |
Methods for Evaluating Learner Activities with New Technologies: Guidelines for the Lab@Future Project:Abstract: The task of evaluating learner activities with new technologies is becoming increasingly complex because traditional evaluation strategies do not adequately consider the unique and often dynamic characteristics of learners and activities carried out. Learner activities are largely driven by motives and relationships that exist in the context in which learning takes place. The article draws insights from theories of human activity and learning in order to understand learners and activities carried out using new technologies. Theory-informed guidelines were abstracted from activity theory and the theory of expansive learning and presented as a method for evaluating learner activities in an international project funded by the European Union (EU), specifically, Lab@Future. We describe basic features of the theories and use a case study to present an example implementation of the theory-informed guidelines used as a method for evaluating learner activities with new technologies. The ultimate goal of this study was to establish a method for applying activity theory-based pedagogical insight to the evaluation of learner activities in the Lab@Future project. The article concludes by reflecting on the benefits of using theory-informed guidelines as a method for evaluating learner activities with new technologies. Website | |
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MGM to Post Full Films on YouTube:by Andy Guess “While open source advocates tend to view Blackboard’s for-profit, license-based model with disdain, the company has responded with a public commitment to embrace free sharing of code when possible. Its first effort to that end, earlier this year, was a partnership with Syracuse University to develop a free software plug-in that would bridge the divide between the Blackboard interface and data from Sakai, one of the main open-source course management packages.” “Today, at the annual conference of Educause, the higher education information technology group, Blackboard is announcing a similar project to integrate with Moodle, the other primary open source alternative. Although it was previously known that Moodle would be next, the announcement revealed that Iowa State University would develop the plug-in with support from Blackboard.” . . | |
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Mickle Street Review: An Electronic Journal of Whitman and American Studies:Walt Whitman always reads well, but on this site he also sounds and looks quite well. The Mickle Street Review brings together audio clips, video recordings, and written scholarship on and about Whitman and the broader world of American Studies. The Review was first published in 1979 and it is based at Rutgers University in Camden. Visitors to the site can browse all of the back issues of the Review, and they can also view the current issue as well. On the homepage, visitors will find the works divided into categories such as “Documents”, “Features”, and “Essays”. One of the more fantastic additions to their site is the digital version of “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” which contains a close reading of the text along with a downloadable Brooklyn walking tour by Jesse Merandy. Moving on, the “Listening Room” contains recordings of “Leaves of Grass,” read by Ralph Bellamy and a version of “Song of Myself” read by Orson Welles. Finally, the “Viewing Room” contains various adaptations and creative visions of Whitman’s works and explorations of his life. From the Scout Report. Website | |
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Microsoft’s New ‘Bing’ Search Engine Makes Lackluster Debut:“Microsoft’s revamped search offering — known as “Bing” — has gone live. In fact, Bing is now the default Live.com homepage. We know what you’re thinking: Does the world need another confusingly-branded search engine? But horrible name and questionable graphics aside (Hot air balloons? Seriously?) Bing actually isn’t that bad of a search engine.” “The problem is that Bing doesn’t really offer any compelling advantage over Google. Bing is fast, offers a minimalist results page (which looks just like Google’s results, but with a bit more filtering/subsearch options in the left-hand sidebar), and acceptable, though not stellar, results. There’s not much more to it. In general, Bing’s results were a bit outdated compared to similar searches preformed on Google, and Bing often lacks the helpful inner-page links that Google offers for large, popular websites.” . . . Website | |
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Mind Your BlackBerry or Mind Your Manners:. . . “As Web-enabled smartphones have become standard on the belts and in the totes of executives, people in meetings are increasingly caving in to temptation to check e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, even (shhh!) ESPN.com. But a spirited debate about etiquette has broken out. Traditionalists say the use of BlackBerrys and iPhones in meetings is as gauche as ordering out for pizza. Techno-evangelists insist that to ignore real-time text messages in a need-it-yesterday world is to invite peril.” . . . “The phone use has become routine in the corporate and political worlds -- and grating to many. A third of more than 5,300 workers polled in May by Yahoo HotJobs, a career research and job listings Web site, said they frequently checked e-mail in meetings. Nearly 20 percent said they had been castigated for poor manners regarding wireless devices. Despite resistance, the etiquette debate seems to be tilting in the favor of smartphone use, many executives said. Managing directors do it. Summer associates do it. It spans gender and generation, private and public sectors.” . . . Web site | |
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MMOGs as Learning Environments: An Ecological Journey into Quest Atlantis and The Sims Online:(2006) Michael Young, P. G. Schrader, and Dongping Zheng. The authors use the concepts of ecological psychology to examine how massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) promote specific learning processes in their players. Web Site | |
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Monroe Community College:A self administered checklist for taking telecourses or online courses. Web Site | |
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Monterey Jazz Festival Digital Collection:Summer brings thoughts of outdoor jazz festivals, and fans of the genre flock to places like Newport and Monterey each year to take in a variety of performances. Since 1958, the pleasant seaside town of Monterey has hosted the Monterey Jazz Festival and their vast archives of performances, ephemera, and other materials are housed at Stanford University’s Archive of Recorded Sound. With substantial funding from the Grammy Foundation, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and Save America’s Treasures, the Archive of Recorded Sound continues to add to this digital collection. First-time visitors will want to click on the “About the Collection” to learn a bit more about the Festival’s history and how to best use the online collection. Next up is the “Collection Highlights”, where visitors can view some excellent clips from such masters as Thelonious Monk, Bobby McFerrin, Charles Mingus, and Dianne Reeves. Scholars of the genre will want to use the search feature to look for more details on the over 9,000 performances contained within the archive. Additionally, visitors can create their own user account to bookmark performances of note and save them for future reference. From the Scout Report. Website | |
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Moodle and Social Constructionism: Looking for the Individual in the Community:. . . “Conceived this way, it is both the Moodle technology and the Moodle community, with all their associated beliefs and practices, that foster the constructionist and highly collaborative learning Dougiamas explores in his doctoral work and that Brown celebrates on stage. At the San Francisco Moodlemoot, the convergence of technologies, communities and keynote addresses stopped just short of epiphany. In the wake of the Moodlemoot, I left feeling evangelized. After listening to Brown, one gets the feeling that we are experiencing--or have already gone through--some epistemic change where traditions of scholarship based on discipline and lonely hard work in isolated garrets have given way to a more playful, fun, and collaborative form of learning and work. Listening to Brown one might be inclined to think that the singularity has arrived, that the new technologies have allowed us to transcend the human condition, and that a new triumphal communitarian beehive has arrived where we can Twitter and chat and upload each other into an era of unprecedented human clarity and enlightenment. Given my own communitarian leanings, I’m sympathetic to the message. But I think it does need to be qualified for two reasons.” Web site | |
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More Colleges Strike Up Music-Sharing Deals, Despite Lukewarm Response in Dorms:(August 22, 2005) Brock Read for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Web Site | |
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More Colleges Turn to Private Networks and Other Measures to Protect Data, Report Says:(October 2006) by Andrea L. Foster. “To protect their electronic data and computer networks, colleges have stepped up their use of virtual private networks, spam filters, and fire walls, among other measures, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Educause Center for Applied Research. The report also says that, over the past two years, the most serious threat facing colleges has shifted. Institutions used to worry about outsiders seizing control of computers and networks, but now the greater danger is that intruders will gain access to confidential electronic data.” . . . Web site (requires subscription) | |
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More Engaged:(Nov. 9, 2009) by Scott Jaschik, Insider Higher Ed “Although budget cuts have many educators this year worried about the quality of education students receive, an annual survey being released today suggests that institutions -- large and small, public and private -- can achieve significant gains. The National Survey of Student Engagement -- whose acronym NSSE is pronounced "nessie" -- doesn't measure learning per se, but a series of qualities of student engagement that are widely believed to correlate with learning. Those qualities range from the rigor of assignments to faculty-student interactions to certain "high impact" experiences (such as capstone courses) that are praised as making students more engaged, more likely to stay enrolled and graduate, and more likely to learn more.” . . . “Another area on which NSSE focused this year was the impact of learning technologies. The survey found positive impacts on learning both for the use of course management (or learning management) systems and for interactive technologies (such as course blogs, student response systems, etc.). While many colleges have the latter technology as part of the former, NSSE explored them as separate topics.” “The use of course management software correlated most strongly, NSSE found, to stronger student-faculty interaction and to gains by students in their personal development. The use of interactive technologies corresponded most strongly with students' self-reported educational gains and with students' view that they had a supportive campus environment.” Web site |
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