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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NACADA Standards for Advising Distance Learners:This website offers guidelines for distance learners to follow. Examples of institutions where distance learning occurs, as well as examples of technology used for distance learning are provided. In addition, this website presents pertinent information regarding distance learning for both the educator and the student. Web Site | |
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NACOL National Standards of Quality for Online Courses:“NACOL conducted a comprehensive review of course standards available. Based on this review, the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) Standards for Quality Online Courses, used by the 16 states in the southern United States is adopted as the source for the NACOL National Standards for Quality for Online Courses. NACOL added a standard to include 21st Century Skills.” 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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National Center for Technology Planning:an updated list of online technology plans from more than 30 community colleges and universities compiled by Larry Anderson. NCTP is a clearinghouse for information related to technology planning. Web Site | |
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National ITFS Association:a non-profit, professional organization of ITFS licensees, applicants and others interested in ITFS activities. NIA's goals are to gather and exchange information, gather data on the use of ITFS, and represent the interests of ITFS licensees and applicants. Web Site | |
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National Survey of Student Engagement:(November 2006) Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research. The 2006 NSSE Web survey asked students to indicate if they were taking all their courses online during the current academic term. Almost 4,000 respondents from 367 different colleges and universities identified themselves as distance education learners - 1,279 first-year students and 2,615 seniors. Report | |
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National Survey of U.S. Public Library Outlet Internet Connectivity:(1998) the American Library Association (ALA) and the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS). While more than 70 percent of the nation's public library systems offer some type of Internet access, fewer than half are able to offer multimedia Internet access to the public at speeds of 56 kbps or greater. Web Site | |
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Nationally Recognized Accrediting Agencies:(2002) From the Department of Education. Web Site Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges Commission on Technical and Career Institutions Middle States Association of Schools and Colleges New England Association of Schools and Colleges North Central Association of Schools and Colleges Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Western Association of Schools and Colleges | |
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Native Networking: Telecommunications and Information Technology in Indian Country:(1999) A report from the Benton Foundation that addresses critical telecommunications and information technology policy issues, focusing on the interaction between Indian sovereignty and federal and state regulation in a quickly changing policy and practice arena. Web Site | |
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NCES Releases Educational Technology in U.S. Public Schools: Fall 2008:(April 28, 2010) Selected findings on educational technology in public schools in fall 2008. -- An estimated 100 percent of public schools had one or more instructional computers with Internet access and the ratio of students to instructional computers with Internet access was 3.1 to 1 (table 1). Ninety-seven percent of schools had one or more instructional computers located in classrooms (excluding laptops on carts) and 58 percent of schools had laptops on carts. -- Of the computers in public schools, 91 percent were used for instructional purposes (table 2). Of these instructional computers, 98 percent had Internet access, 15 percent were less than 1 year old, 14 percent were laptops on carts, and 51 percent were located in classrooms (excluding laptops on carts). -- Public schools reported having wireless network access for the whole school (39 percent), or for part of the school (30 percent), or wireless connections only from laptops to carts (9 percent) (table 5).4 -- Thirty-one percent of public schools reported having full-time staff in the school whose only responsibility was technology support and/or technology integration (table 7). Forty-seven percent of secondary schools reported having such staff compared with 27 percent of elementary schools. Thirty-five percent of schools with low poverty concentration6 reported having full-time technology staff compared to 28 percent of schools with high poverty concentration. -- Public schools reported the extent to which various staff helped school staff integrate technology into instruction. Teachers helped in 20 percent of schools to a major extent and in 47 percent to a moderate extent (table 8). School-level technology staff helped integrate technology into instruction in 29 percent of schools to a major extent and in 34 percent to a moderate extent. District-level technology staff provided technical support in 59 percent of schools to a major extent and in 27 percent to a moderate extent (table 9). School-level technology staff provided technical support in 42 percent of schools to a major extent and in 30 percent to a moderate extent. -- Opinions on the use of educational technology in the school differed by poverty concentration. A larger percentage of schools with low poverty concentration than schools with high poverty concentration agreed that “teachers are sufficiently trained in technology usage” (74 percent versus 62 percent), “teachers are sufficiently trained to integrate technology into classroom instruction” (67 percent versus 56 percent), “technical support for educational technology is adequate” (74 percent versus 60 percent), and “funding for educational technology is being spent in the most appropriate ways” (79 percent versus 69 percent) (table 10). Web site |
Net Price Calculator:U.S. Department of Education In accordance with the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA), by October 29, 2011, each postsecondary institution in the United States that participates in Title IV student aid programs must post a net price calculator on its Web site that uses institutional data to provide estimated net price information to current and prospective students and their families based on a student’s individual circumstances. To assist institutions in meeting this obligation, The National Center for Education Statistics, in cooperation with the Office of Postsecondary Education and IT Innovative Solutions Corp., has designed and developed a fully functional net price calculator available to all Title IV postsecondary institutions for use on their institutional Web sites. To use or review the template, go to: http://npc.inovas.net/institution/. For assistance using the template, please contact Ruba Nuwayhid of IT Innovative Solutions Corp. at (240) 252-1707, or Ruba@inovas.net. Web site |
Neurons: Animated Cellular and Molecular Concepts: | |
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New Broadband Stimulus Funding Targets Satellite Service:(May 10, 2010) by Joan Engebretson, Connected Planet "The Rural Utilities Service issued a request for proposal Friday indicating that the agency will award approximately $105 million in what is essentially a third broadband stimulus funding round. The vast majority of the money -- up to $100 million -- will go to help cover the cost of bringing broadband satellite service to remote areas. The remaining $5 million is earmarked for organizations winning funding in Round 1 or Round 2 of the broadband stimulus program and would go toward technical assistance and rural library programs.” . . . “The rural library grants would go toward the cost of computers for rural libraries. The technical assistance grants cover activities such as regional broadband development planning, market studies, engineering designs and financial analysis. Because Round 2 awards have not yet been made, organizations that applied in Round 2 may apply for the library or technical assistance grants. Applications for the new funding round will be accepted between May 7 and June 7, 2010. All awards will be made by September 30, 2010.” Web site |
New Literacy in the Web 2.0 World:The presentation discusses emerging literacies and argues that school curriculum must be revised to teach students to manage information, make meaning from multimodal text and represent knowledge and information. The session also introduces an idea of social networking literacy. Web site | |
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New Project Enlists Women to Help Women Learn Online:… “Their work centers on a social-networking Web site that would allow women to share information about online education and serve as mentors to one another. It’s called the Collaborative Online Resource Environment for Women (Core4women), a still-in-the-works effort that Ms. Weatherly and her colleagues described during a workshop here Monday at the national conference of the United States Distance Learning Association.” “The project, billed in the presentation as “A Better Way: Women Telling Women About Online Learning,” evolved from Ms. Weatherly’s dissertation research at Texas A&M University. Studies like the American Association of University Women’s “The Third Shift” had examined barriers to women pursuing education. Ms. Weatherly sought to push beyond that. She looked at how earning online degrees changed women’s lives, sometimes in major ways, like one woman who left an abusive relationship. In the process, Ms. Weatherly encountered research subjects who wanted to share the expertise they had gained with other women.” Website | |
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New Search Tool Aims at Answering Tough Queries, but Not at Taking on Google:. . . “Mr. Wolfram’s service does not search through Web pages, and it will not help with movie times or camera shopping. Instead it computes the answers to queries using enormous collections of data the company has amassed. It can quickly spit out facts like the average body mass index of a 40-year-old male, whether the Eiffel Tower is taller than Seattle’s Space Needle, and whether it is high tide in Miami right now. WolframAlpha, which is expected to be available to the public at wolframalpha.com in the next week, is not a finished product. It is an early working version of a project that has been years in the making and will continue to evolve over years, if not decades. As such, there is much it cannot answer now.” . . . Website | |
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New Structures and Spaces of Learning: The Systemic Impact of Connective Knowledge, Connectivism, and Networked Learning:by George Siemens, University of Manitoba, to be presented on Oct. 10, 2008, Universidade do Minho “Since Illich's 1970 vision of learning webs, society has moved progressively closer to a networked world where content and conversations are continually at our finger tips and instruction and learning are not centered on the educator. The last decade of technological innovation - mobile phones, social media, software agents - has created new opportunities for learners. Learners are capable of forming global learning networks, creating permeable classroom walls. While networks have altered much of society, teaching, and learning, systemic change has been minimal. This presentation will explore how potential systemic responses leverage the transformative potential of connective knowledge and networked learning.” . . . Website | |
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New Study Finds Time Spent Online Important for Teen Development:November 2008, MacArthur Foundation “The most extensive U.S. study on teens and their use of digital media finds that America’s youth are developing important social and technical skills online – often in ways adults do not understand or value.” “ ‘Online spaces provide unprecedented opportunities for kids to expand their social worlds and engage in public life, whether that is connecting with peers over MySpace or Facebook, or publishing videos on YouTube,’ said Ito. ‘Kids learn on the Internet in a self-directed way, by looking around for information they are interested in, or connecting with others who can help them. This is a big departure from how they are asked to learn in most schools, where the teacher is the expert and there is a fixed set of content to master.’ ‘ “The research demonstrates that, although many young people are developing a broad range of sophisticated new literacy and technical skills, they are also facing new challenges in how to manage their visibility and social relationships online. Online media, messages, and profiles that young people post can travel beyond expected audiences and are often difficult to eradicate after the fact. The research suggests that this rapid pace of change presents challenges for both adults and kids as they struggle to keep up with technology and related social changes.”
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New Study Released By The Center For The Digital Future and AARP Shows Internet Users 50+ Are Rapidly Closing the Digital Divide with Booming Online Activity:“Americans 50+ are increasingly becoming immersed in the Internet and in many ways can be compared to users who are decades younger, according to findings from the Center for the Digital Future released today in conjunction with AARP. The study takes a look at online behaviors of those age 50+ compared to the under 50 demographic.” . . . Website | |
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New Systems Keep a Close Eye on Online Students at Home:“Tucked away in a 1,200-page bill now in Congress is a small paragraph that could lead distance-education institutions to require spy cameras in their students’ homes. It sounds Orwellian, but the paragraph - part of legislation renewing the Higher Education Act - is all but assured of becoming law by the fall. No one in Congress objects to it.” “The paragraph is actually about clamping down on cheating. It says that an institution that offers an online program must prove that an enrolled student is the same person who does the work. Already, the language is spurring some colleges to try technologies that authenticate online test takers by reading their fingerprints, watching them via Web cameras, or recording their keystrokes. Some colleges claim there are advantages for students: The devices allow them to take tests anytime, anywhere. Many students must now travel to distant locations so a proctor can watch them take exams on paper.” Website | |
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New York State Department of Education Office of College and University Evaluation Distance Higher Education Initiative:(2004) A key responsibility of the Distance Higher Education Initiative is to provide quality assurance for the degree and certificate programs offered through distance education by colleges and universities in New York State. The Good Practice and Capability Review sections of this web site describe the quality assurance criteria and approval process. Web Site | |
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Ning Alternatives, Collaboration, & Self Hosting:(April 15, 2010) by Alec Couros, Open Thinking “Ning announced today that it plans to “phase out its free service“. What this means for the educators who use Ning for free (or even pay for some services) is uncertain at the moment although it was stated that a detailed plan of the new services will be released within two weeks. . . . Seeing that Google Docs has gone real-time, I thought it would be great to collaboratively build a document with Ning alternatives, including examples and comments on services other have tried. I created a new Google Document and tweeted a call for collaboration.” . . . Web site | |
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Ning Fails at Free Social Networking:(April 16, 2010) by Eliot Van Buskirk , Wired “Ning co-founder Marc Andreessen promised Ning network creators they would be able to port their networks elsewhere. Now, they may have good reason to do so. Ning, a brainchild of Netscape bazillionaire Marc Andreessen that was designed to let anyone make a social network about anything for free, won’t do it anymore. Each of the service’s 2.3 million networks’ users will disappear unless its creator either pays Ning or migrate the network to another platform.” . . . “The service’s premium offerings include faster access to Ning’s support staff ($10 or $100 per month, depending on responsiveness), custom domain names ($5 per month), additional storage and bandwidth ($10 per month), removal of ads with the option to embed your own ($25 per month), and getting rid of the link at the bottom of every page that asks users to create their own social networks ($25 per month). The ability to roll your own social network has a powerful allure, and Ning’s conversion into a paid-only service could open the door for a free competitor to enter the space -- perhaps without accepting the $120 million or so in reported investment that almost certainly pressured Ning to try to extract more money from its users.” . . . Web site | |
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Ning Planning to Remain Free for Teachers:(May 4, 2010) by Joshua Brustein, New York Times “Ning, a company that allows users to build their own social networks, says it has signed a letter of intent with a major educational publisher to keep its service free for educators, several weeks after causing an outcry among nonprofit groups by announcing that it would end its popular free service. Ning did not give any more information about the deal, which it disclosed as it outlined its plans to begin charging subscription fees to all of its users.” “Ning claims over 46 million users, spread over 300,000 social networks focused on topics from music to politics to religion. It has become popular among nonprofit groups, and tens of thousands of organizations established networks ranging in scale from teachers who set up networks for their students to sprawling efforts like T. Boone Pickens’s PickensPlan, for people interested in alternative energy, which claims over 200,000 users. Setting up the network is free, but extra features are available for a fee.” . . . Web site |
No Significant Difference Phenomenon:(1999) by Thomas Russell. A bibliography of research from 1928 to the present which reports that there is no significant difference in learning outcomes for students taking traditional face-to-face or distance learning classes. Web Site | |
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No Test Tubes? Debate on Virtual Science Classes:(October 2006) by Sam Dillon for the New York Times. . . . “As part of a broader audit of the thousands of high school courses that display its Advanced Placement trademark, the [College] board has recruited panels of university professors and experts in Internet-based learning to scrutinize the quality of online laboratories used in Web-based A.P. science courses.” Web site | |
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Northern Virginia Community College:Also see Is ELI for Me? Web Site | |
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NSF and the Birth of the Internet:April 29, 2008 Includes timelines, images, videos, interviews, etc. “The Internet is now a part of modern life, but how was it created? Learn how the technology behind the Internet was created and how NSFNET, a network created to help university researchers in the 1980s, grew to become the Internet we know today.” Website | |
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