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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U. of California Considers Online Classes, or Even Degrees:(May 9, 2010) by Josh Keller and Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education “Online education is booming, but not at elite universities -- at least not when it comes to courses for credit. Leaders at the University of California want to break that mold. This fall they hope to put $5-million to $6-million into a pilot project that could clear the way for the system to offer online undergraduate degrees and push distance learning further into the mainstream. The vision is UC's most ambitious -- and controversial -- effort to reshape itself after cuts in public financial support have left the esteemed system in crisis.” “Supporters of the plan believe online degrees will make money, expand the number of California students who can enroll, and re-establish the system's reputation as an innovator.” . . . “But UC's ambitions face a series of obstacles. The system has been slow to adopt online instruction despite its deep connections to Silicon Valley. Professors hold unusually tight control over the curriculum, and many consider online education a poor substitute for direct classroom contact. As a result, courses could take years to gain approval. The University of California's decision to begin its effort with a pilot research project has also raised eyebrows. The goal is to determine whether online courses can be delivered at selective-research-university standards.” . . . “If the project stumbles, it could dilute UC's brand and worsen already testy relations between professors and the system's president, Mark G. Yudof.” Web site |
U. of Phoenix Lets Students Find Answers Virtually:“For the 345,000 students enrolled in the for-profit university's online or campus-based courses, the virtual schools and businesses function like case studies, in that students use them to diagnose and solve typical problems of organizations. The big difference from textbook-style cases, say the program's creators, is in the level of realism and interactivity.” . . . “Phoenix students, instead, can tap into a virtual world where each fictional school or corporation comes with detailed, simulated scenarios that employees are likely to encounter in the workplace. The scenarios aren't fully interactive virtual worlds like Second Life - they don't provide second-by-second feedback - but they do bring real-world problems to life.” “The programs also offer more variety than working out of a textbook, says Adam Honea, Phoenix's dean and provost. In a typical business course, he says, students work on one or two case studies at a time. "But because this is computer-generated, we can have a hundred scenarios and randomly assign them so that each student in the class would get a whole different assignment." And, unlike case studies, in which information comes neatly packaged, students using the Phoenix software have to hunt for data in multiple files, documents, and records, some of them confusing or incomplete, just like in real life.” . . .Website | |
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U.S. Copyright Office Home Page:Web Site | |
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U.S. Department of Education Announces the Release of a New Spanish Language Version of its College Search Tool, College Navigator:College Navigator is a free consumer information tool designed to help students, parents, high school counselors, and others get information about nearly 7,000 postsecondary institutions in the United States . It provides a wide range of information -- such as programs offered, retention and graduation rates, prices, aid available, degrees awarded, campus safety, athletics, and accreditation -- in a user-friendly tool. Web site | |
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UCLA Internet Report (2001):This report from UCLA finds that Internet use in the US is a mainstream activity that continues to spread across all age groups, education levels and incomes. However, enthusiasm for e-commerce is down and broad concerns remain about Internet privacy and security. Web Site | |
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Under Financial Overhaul, FTC Could Gain Enforcement Power Over Internet:(April 27, 2010) by Cecilia Kang, Washington Post “The Federal Trade Commission could become a more powerful watchdog for Internet users under a little-known provision in financial overhaul legislation that would expand the agency's ability to create rules. An emboldened FTC would stand in stark contrast to a besieged Federal Communications Commission, whose ability to oversee broadband providers has been cast into doubt after a federal court ruled last month that the agency lacked the ability to punish Comcast for violating open-Internet guidelines.” “The version of regulatory overhaul legislation passed by the House would allow the FTC to issue rules on a fast track and permit the agency to impose civil penalties on companies that hurt consumers. FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz has argued in favor of bolstering his agency's enforcement ability.” . . . "The proposal comes as uncertainty surrounds the federal government's ability to regulate the Internet and oversee service providers. Spokeswomen at the FTC and FCC declined to comment. "Everyone is trying to figure out who is on first and what the game is here. Everything is a moving target right now," said Art Brodsky, a spokesman for Public Knowledge, an advocacy group.” Web site |
Understanding E-Learning:(2002) A special report from London's Financial Times. A Better Way to Learn by Andrew Fisher. Companies are using technology and the Internet to revolutionize employee training. Describes the benefits in time, cost and performance. Desktop Learning: Moving Inside the Virtual Classroom by John Lamb. Will desktop learning on the Internet replace instructor-led training? Financial Sector: High Tech Solution Eases Cost Pressures by Sarah Murray. Looks at the the cost savings for companies that train their employees online. Service Providers: Seeking the Perfect Match by Mark Vernon. Discusses choosing the right e-learning vendor. Wireless Training: Mobile Lessons: Knowledge on the Move by Joia Shillingford. Wireless training, delivered via mobile devices, looks like being the next piece in the e-learning jigsaw. | |
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Universal Learning at a Distance: Can We Plug It In?:(2005) by Steven R. Van Hook. The author discusses the digital divide, financial matters, threats to the successful development of access to global distance education, the cultural divide, and achieving the promise. Web Site | |
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Universal Service, Broadband and the Death Star:He wanted to begin with questions: what level of service should be supported for rural consumers? Should the supported services include just plain old telephone service or broadband, wireline or wireless service too? If competition fails to achieve affordability for a particular service in a rural community, should extremely wealthy rural consumers be subsidized or should the program be targeted to assure affordability for non-wealthy consumers in some way? For low income consumers in non-rural areas, should their supported service or services be comparable to the level of service provided to rural consumers? How should Congress or the FCC adjust the program for rural health care? What about the future of the e-rate? House Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell said, “Broadband is the communications platform of the future. Any successful universal service program for the future must account for this reality. Universal service is about access and affordability. A proper universal service program should ensure access and affordability in places and situations where market forces cannot or do not. Properly targeting universal service support must ensure consistency, efficiency, and fairness.” Chairman Dingell said Congress, not the Federal Communications Commission, is better suited to make the tough political choices on how best to reform the system. Rep Mike Doyle (D-PA) may grab all the headlines saying, “Generally, I think the Universal Service Fund needs to be blown up like the Death Star.” He continued, “We need to completely reform the Fund by moving away from subsidizing telephone service and instead put our money toward the broadband future. For now, I’ll call this needed reform Universal Service 2.0.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/24/AR2008062401135.html Universal Service Fund should be “blown up” like Death Star (ars technica) George Lucas: Free Broadband for Schools (Broadcasting&Cable) U.S. must reform telecom services fund Congress told (Reuters) | |
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University Instructors' Reflections on their First Online Teaching Experiences:(April 2004) by Dianne Conrad. A qualitative study that reveals the precarious process instructors experience when teaching online for the first time. Interviews with instructors show they had little knowledge of the new medium they were entering and relied heavily on their face-to-face experiences and their own pedagogy. Web Site | |
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University of Delaware's Faculty-IT Partnership: Educational Transformation through Teamwork:(May/June 2003) by Janet R. de Vry and George Watson. Describes the dynamic partnership of a faculty-led institute that promotes problem-based learning and a technology support center that connects course goals to custom design. Web Site | |
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University of New Hampshire Cell Phone Study:by Chuck Martin, Whittemore School [According to this survey of 707 students at the University of New Hampshire ,] “Students . . . want pragmatic and practical feature on their cell phones. Their top current uses of cell phones are to make phone calls, text message, and use their phone as an alarm clock. These practical features on the cell phone are similar to the practical features students are looking for on the cell phone of the future. Students are not looking for a high tech phone. Now and in the future, students ranked the most technologically advanced features as the least used and the least desired. Features like music, global positioning satellite (GPS), email, and video messaging were among the lowest used features on current cell phones. This was a similar trend when they were asked about the features they would want on a future cell phone. Features such as video editing, a friend locator, and using the cell phone as a credit card were all ranked low in regards to the importance of being a feature provided on future cell phones.” Website | |
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University Policies and Practices Addressing Improper Peer-to-Peer File Sharing:(March 31, 2004) Examples of actions colleges and universities are taking to address the problem of unauthorized peer-to-peer file sharing. From the American Council on Education and the Education Task Force of the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities. Web Site | |
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Unleashing The Tribe: Small Passionate Communities:“This is the 25-minute keynote, Unleashing The Tribe, which I delivered at the Tipperary Institute in May this year, a shorter version of the 90 minute marathon I was invited to give at Redbridge Council the same week. It’s a “here’s where we are now” on what makes communities tick online, on mobile, in face-to-face settings, and why understanding this is so important for learning, borrowing unashamedly from Clay Shirky, Danah Boyd, a plethora of the hundred or so research reports that have crossed my browser this past 12 months and all the conversations I’ve had, blog posts written. Not bad for less than half-an-hour of audio and slides.” Website | |
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UNT Professors Use Simulated Classrooms to Train Teachers, Boost New Teacher Retention:“Less than 50 percent of first-time teachers remain in the field for more than three years, according to Dr. Tandra Tyler-Wood, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of North Texas. Retention of teachers is essential in the ongoing battle against the national shortage of special education teachers. Tyler-Wood and her colleagues in UNT's College of Information are working to develop teaching methods that will produce more qualified teachers, and subsequently improve beginning teacher retention.” “Tyler-Wood and her colleagues are evaluating simSchool, an on-line classroom simulator that allows students to practice their skills in a low-pressure environment. Tyler-Wood says that getting students acclimated to the classroom environment earlier than their senior year is essential to improving teacher quality.” . . . Web site | |
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Untangling a Tangled Web: An Overview of Web-based Instruction Programs:(1999) by Scott Fredrickson, University of Nebraska, for the THE Journal. Sections describe the program, key features, and perceived strengths and weaknesses of several Web-based programs. Web Site | |
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Unweaving The Tangled Web:(Sept. 16, 2009) MindHacks . . . “You need to understand social network analysis because it is becoming one of the most powerful method to understand human behaviour. As we've discussed before, the fact that digital communications technology is so common means that we're constantly creating data trails that can reveal surprising amounts of intimate information with relatively simple methods. For example, the BPS Research Digest just covered a study that could infer about 95% of friendships just from looking at location data from mobile phones - something that is one of the most basic information trails in the rich data stream automatically produced by social media.” “This approach to understanding human networks is also likely to be increasingly important for human science. The last few decades have seen a massive increase in understanding on how genetics influences our minds and behaviour and social network analysis will see us increasingly linking individual discoveries from biology and cognitive science to the role of our relationships in our lives.” Web site | |
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Updated and Theoretical Rationale for Interaction:(2002) by Terry Anderson. An attempt to define a theoretical rationale and guide for instructional designers and teachers interested in developing distance education systems that effectively and efficiently meet diverse student learning needs. Web Site | |
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Updating Web Sites with Google Spreadsheets:(Aug. 31, 2009) by Alan Levine, CogDogBlog “I’ve done a handful of web projects this year where it made sense to store data in Google Spreadsheets, and then use a bit of PHP code to make them be dynamically displayed on a web site. In many cases, these are tables of data that are parsed and presented nicely in the web site, but for a few NMC projects, it made sense as a way for a staff person to update data on our web pages w/o having to touch the pages. "As a first example, I am cleaning up an older WordPress site I use for logging my running/training; in the past, I kept a spreadsheet on my desktop for keeping a run log and then manually transferred the totals/averages/graphs to my web site by pasting into some text files (they are embedded with a PHP include). It worked, but it did have that tedious manual smell for something that should be more automated.” . . . Web site |
Use and Users of Electronic Library Resources: An Overview and Analysis of Recent Research Studies:(August 2003) Web Site | |
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Use of Instructional Dialogue by University Students in a Distance Education Chemistry Course:(2004) by Inbal Tuvi-Arad, Avner Caspia, and Paul Gorsky. The authors investigated the kinds of dialogues Open University students engaged in and resources they used while studying an intermediate-level chemistry course. Research objectives document students' study strategies, the types of dialogue they used to overcome conceptual difficulties; and how chemistry students used resources and dialogues compared to those studying other sciences. Web Site | |
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Using a Framework to Engage Faculty in Instructional Technologies:(2004) by Nancy Chism. A conceptual framework enables faculty development planners to better estimate the potential effectiveness of various strategies. Web Site | |
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Using a Web-based System to Estimate the Cost of Online Course Production:(Fall 2009) by Stuart Gordon, Old Dominion University, Wu He, Old Dominion University, and M'hammed Abdous, Old Dominion Unversity “The increasing demand for online courses requires efficient and low cost production. Since the decision to develop online courses is often affected by financial factors, it is becoming increasingly important to determine, upfront, the cost of online course production. Many of the programs and educators interested in developing online courses underestimate the costs involved in developing and producing an online course. Efficient and reasonable cost estimates can assist institutions and educators to realize the costs of putting a course online and thus can improve strategic planning and budgeting processes. In an effort to facilitate, streamline, and improve the cost estimation process for online course development, the Center for Learning Technologies at Old Dominion University (ODU) has designed a web-based cost estimate system. This online tool enables our institution to determine the estimated costs involved in online course development.” Web site |
Using ALN to Reach On-Campus Students During an Off-Campus Summer Session:(2001) by X. Christine Wang, Alaina Kanfer, D. Michelle Hinn, and Lanny Arvan. Transferring from a traditional face-to-face classroom to the online summer session requires strong motivation, self-discipline, good time management skills, and a comfortable learning environment with a stable Internet connection. Students' learning outcomes were closely related to their satisfaction with online communication, technical support, and the course design. Prior experience and a positive attitude toward technology were important factors for successful online learning. Web Site | |
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Using ALNs to Support a Complete Educational Experience:(1999) by Melody Thompson and Jean McGrath. Examples of online strategies used at the Penn State World Campus to enhance: access to high-quality course content, faculty/student interactions, interaction among students, access to information and instructional resources, flexible access to support services, and developing students’ feeling of "belonging" to the institution. Web Site | |
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Using Asynchronous Audio Communication (AAC) Across Academic Disciplines to Increase Instructor Presence and Enhance Students’ Engagement, Learning Outcomes, and Overall Satisfaction in the Online Classroom:Facilitating learning online requires an evolving set of teaching skills that embrace Web 2.0 technologies. Asynchronous Audio Communication (AAC) may bridge the virtual “communication divide” between instructors and students. The purpose of this study was multi-faceted: first, to assess students’ and instructors’ satisfaction with asynchronous audio instructor feedback as a teaching strategy in the online courseroom; second, to determine the perceived effect of AAC on student satisfaction, learning outcomes, student engagement, and perceived instructor presence; and third, to examine whether there was a significant difference in the way AAC was perceived by undergraduate and graduate students attending two southern state universities. Asynchronous Audio Communication in the form of instructor feedback was utilized in graduate and undergraduate online courses in the areas of reading, health education, and family studies across a 9-month period. The total sample included 156 participants. Instructors sent out both group and individual audio communication throughout the course. At the end of the semester, students completed an online survey that collected quantitative and qualitative data. Descriptive, inferential, and qualitative data analyses demonstrated that the majority of students and instructors reported that AAC can improve online students’ perceptions of instructor presence, student engagement, knowledge of course content, and the instructor-student interaction. Website | |
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Using Asynchronous Learning in Redesign: Reaching and Retaining the At-Risk Student:(2004) by Carol A. Twigg. Research proves that the first year of college is the most critical to a college student's success and to degree completion. In this article, the author examines the weaknesses attributing to the myriad of students contributing to an increase in the drop-failure-withdrawal rates at postsecondary schools. Web Site | |
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Using e-Portfolios at Penn State to Enhance Student Learning Status, Prospects, and Strategies:(February 2002) by David DiBiase. A summary of findings from a series of seminars the e-Education Institute of Penn State's College of Earth and Mineral Sciences held in Fall 2000 and 2001 on portfolio assessment. Recommends actions to provide every Penn State student with the opportunity to create an e-portfolio as a means to plan and showcase his or her university career. Web Site | |
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Using Multiple Intelligence Theory in the Virtual Classroom:(2003) Margie Meacham writes that the best way to engage as many learners as possible is to use different techniques to appeal to multiple intelligences. Learning Circuits, June 2003. Web Site | |
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Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities:(2005) Kimberly Ling, Gerard Beenen, Pamela J. Ludford, Xiaoqing Wang, Klarissa Chang, Xin Li, Dan Cosley, Dan Frankowski, Loren Terveen, Al Mamunur Rashid, Paul Resnick, and Robert Kraut. The authors found individuals often contributed more when they were reminded of their uniqueness and given specific and challenging goals. However, some participants offered more when they were given group, rather than individual, goals. The article offers suggestions and challenges for deriving design implications from social science theories. Web Site | |
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