Library - Articles, Abstracts, and Research

How to Design Standards-Based Online Courses
Campus Technology
Two universities share how the Quality Matters rubric informs their online course design and improves the learning experience for students.

Governor Jerry Brown Huge Gift to California Community College Students: Free Textbooks
Creative Commons
In 2016 former California Governor Jerry Brown did something that put thousands of dollars into the pockets of California community college students. The cash arrived in the form of direct out-of-pocket savings as California joined Virginia and 38 community colleges in other states that are rolling out Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) degree programs. ZTC degree programs give community college students the opportunity to earn an entire high-quality, transfer-eligible degree without having to spend a dime on proprietary textbooks. What’s more, students can maintain free access to all their college learning materials forever.

The Canada OER Movement: Saving Students Money from Coast to Coast
BC Campus/Open Ed
Starting in 2016, BCcampus initiated the Canada OER Group, which is comprised of members representing various open education initiatives across Canada. The primary driver for this group is to ensure that provinces are openly and actively sharing ideas, supporting each other in similar projects, and ensuring that initiatives do not re-invent the wheel by duplicating efforts on the same projects.

MERLOT manages OER Site for Workforce Programs
Campus Technology
California State University and its Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching program are working to make open educational resources available for workforce training.

Building a New Model for Data-Driven Decision Making
Campus Technology
By creating a centralized Office of Analytics and developing a flexible analytics platform, the University of Maryland University College has leveraged data to reduce recruiting expenses, increase course completion and student persistence rates, and inform university policy.

Separating Education from Credentialing
Inside Higher Ed
A prominent technology think tank wants the federal government to encourage the use of standardized assessments to measure postsecondary knowledge and skills, with an approach that would separate learning from credentialing and challenge the dominance of traditional college degrees. In a new report, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation called for the “radical step” of “breaking the ironclad link between education and certification."

7 Best Practices for Deploying Lecture-Capture
Campus Technology
Today's students increasingly expect ubiquitous lecture capture so they can review lectures to improve their understanding of the material or catch up on a class they missed. To meet this demand, colleges and universities are scaling up their lecture capture deployments to more classrooms and providing faculty the option of recording lectures outside of the classroom.

Why Today's MOOCs Are Not Innovative
Campus Technology
MOOCs are delivery methods – not changes in curriculum. If we want to change education, we have to change how we think about teaching and content.

Digital, Verified and Less Open
Inside Higher Ed
More colleges are issuing digital badges to help their students display skills to employers or graduate programs, and colleges are tapping vendor platforms to create a verified form of the alternative credentials.

Coding Goes Mainstream
Inside Higher Ed
Traditional colleges including Northeastern University and Bellevue College are entering the coding boot camp market by partnering with boot camp providers or by creating their own programs.

Lead Without a Title
Inside Higher Ed
How can you effectively lead people when you don't have formal authority over them? Elizabeth Suárez provides advice.

Trends in Distance Education - What College Leaders Should Consider
A white paper from the Instructional Technology Council delivered to the American Association of Community Colleges Commission on Academic, Student, and Community Development.
By Mickey Slimp, Ed.D.

Curating Tech Developments In Online Learning
Campus Technology
New ways to deploy artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, gamification and robotic telepresence are making their way into classrooms across the globe every day. Two leaders in the field of online learning are building a website called Virtually Inspired to curate examples of what they consider the most promising efforts.

The Bright Future of Higher Ed
Inside Higher Ed Essay
Please Note: This essay is a rebuttal of the essay Coming To You Soon: Uber U. - FL
Do you recognize your college in David Theo Goldberg’s provocative postsecondary dystopian essay Coming To You Soon: Uber U. For me, the answer is no. Call it small liberal arts college it bias. Call it privilege. Call it a structural blindspot. Call it whatever you will - my lived higher ed experience is one of (mostly) progressive improvement.

Community Colleges: Somewhat Different
Educause Review
Community colleges are often in the "somewhat different" category. Our institutions frequently don't have the ability to hire more staff to meet new technology challenges; instead, we ask our existing staff to change roles as often as a NASCAR driver changes hats at the end of a race. Although community colleges have infrastructure needs similar to those at other institutions, we struggle with long-range planning and funding for technology procurement and replacement, since a large portion of our budgets are at the yearly discretion of legislatures and many of us have not seen a tuition increase in four or more years.

The Internet of Things For Educators And Learners
Educause Review
Key Takeaways: Given the phenomenal growth of connected devices in the Internet of Things, the issue of how higher education supports educators with the IoT in learning environments becomes a key consideration in teaching and learning. An educational environment explicitly focused on supporting learning with the IoT could be extremely beneficial; we call it the Educators' and Learners' Internet of Things, or ELIoT. What we have to decide is whether we will prepare, through the design of distributed, adaptive systems and methodologies, to give the ELIoT a warm welcome in higher education while managing the accompanying serious considerations.

Coming To You Soon: Uber U
Inside Higher Ed Essay
Please Note: This essay focuses on the university BUT offers an indictment of online education. - FL
In higher education, we are increasingly facing the distinct possibility of a faceless future, teacherless courses, online everything, argues David Theo Goldberg. Over the past two decades, and across the nation, the university has been undergoing profound changes. These structural changes underpin an emergent philosophy of the new university today -- one that should give pause to anyone concerned about the direction of higher education.