By Lola Duffort, Rutland Herald The state has signed an agreement that will make it much easier — and cheaper — for Vermont-based colleges to export their online courses to students nationwide. Currently, a college must get approval from each state from which it intends to enroll students to their online courses — an often complicated [...]

By Ian Whitaker, Las Vegas Sun Buoyed by an endorsement from Gov. Brian Sandoval, the online Western Governors University is making its way into Nevada. The university announced this month that it would offer classes in the state. The private, nonprofit school is based in Utah and has more than 57,000 students nationwide. The university will [...]

by Journalist’s Resource A 2015 report from a research consortium at Harvard University and MIT provides new data on the MOOC project that the two universities jointly launched in 2012. One of the largest surveys of MOOCs to date, it builds on a series of reports released in 2014 that focused on the joint project’s first [...]

University of Adelaide is phasing out lectures | afr.com "The small-group experiences are what it known as "blended learning" or "flip the classroom" - a new style of teaching that many universities worldwide are experimenting with. Instead of sitting in lecture theatres to learn the basic material, students learn it in online courses. They then bring that knowledge into the classroom where, in small groups guided by an instructor, they discuss what they have learnt and use the knowledge to solve problems. The University of Adelaide calls it a "small-group discovery experience". This year it's been introduced for second-year students and next year it will go to third-year. After that it will be available to honours and masters students." tags: education pedagogy Screen Addiction Is Taking a Toll on Children - The New York Times tags: research education technology UNESCO launches World Library of Science - Free Online Science Education Resource tags: education science free UNESCO ISTE 2015: Global Education Day Resource Jam Excellent resources shared by @Craig Perrier fro the Global Ed Day at #SITE2015 tags: education ISTE15 globaled The Best Ways a Teacher Can Demonstrate Leadership in the Classroom? | C. M. Rubin tags: leadership education Great Collaborative Tools for Working Remotely tags: collaboration tools education 4 Types of Accurate Rubric Descriptors tags: rubrics education assessment Smart Studying Tips for Collaborative Students Important tips from globaldigitalcitizen.org to support online collaborative work amongst students. I see this applied to middle and high school as well as higher education. tags: education collaboration online K-12 Global Competence Grade Level Indicators tags: education globaleducator globalcompetence Global-ready teacher competency framework: Standards and Indicators (P21C Skills) tags: education globalcompetency skills standards Go Global Toolkit From VIF International tags: education globaleducator How Teacherpreneurs Spread Good Ideas | Edutopia tags: Teacherpreneur education The Global Education Conference Call for Proposals The Global Education Conference is online and free and runs from November 16-19, 2015. This is the first call for proposals - read carefully - we encourage you to share your global journey with others. tags: education gec globaled15 Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Collaboration

"New lists rank the college among four-year institutions Colorado Mountain College was just named the nation’s third-most-affordable college for obtaining." according to Colorado Mountain College and Glenwood Springs Post Independent. Colorado Mountain College was just named the nation’s third-most-affordable college for obtaining a bachelor’s degree, in a report from the U.S. Department of Education. It is the only institution in Colorado listed among the country’s most affordable four-year institutions. "We have always known that Colorado Mountain College presents an extraordinary value, so being recognized as offering the third-most-affordable bachelor’s degree in the country confirms that students at CMC are financially smart and receive a terrific advantage compared to their peers," said Dr. Carrie Besnette Hauser, president and CEO of the college, which boasts seven campuses and 11 learning locations spread across the central Rocky Mountains. "With national student debt reaching $1.3 trillion and more jobs requiring a post-secondary degree or certificate, students and families are acutely aware of the importance of an affordable, high-quality education." On July 1 the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education College Affordability and Transparency released its annual list comparing the affordability of public and private colleges and universities, sorted by whether institutions grant four-year, two-year or less than two-year awards and degrees. Based on 2013-14 tuition levels, CMC ranked third in the United States for lowest tuition among public four-year institutions, behind Dine College and Haskell Indian Nations University. The institutions ranked first and second are both tribal colleges. According to the Department of Education list, Colorado Mountain College is the most affordable general (nonspecialized) public four-year institution in the nation... For the 2015-16 academic year, the college’s elected board of trustees voted for no increase in associate-level tuition for in-district students, and no increase in bachelor’s-level tuition for all students. At the time of that vote, in January, the trustees indicated strong support for freezing bachelor’s-level tuition while gradually raising associate-level tuition, in order to grow into uniform, simple tuition rates across all levels of instruction. To see the complete listings from the U.S. Department of Education, go to http://collegecost.ed.gov/. Colorado Mountain College is located in Steamboat Springs, Rifle, Carbondale, Glenwood Springs, Glenwood Springs-Spring Valley, Aspen, Edwards, Dillon, Breckenridge, Leadville and Buena Vista. Of these locations, the three campuses in Spring Valley, Leadville and Steamboat Springs are residential. The college’s Central Services administrative offices, which serve all other locations, are located in downtown Glenwood Springs. Read more... Source: Glenwood Springs Post Independent

Alexander Silva writes, "Westford schools are preparing to embrace the digital revolution by creating a digital learning plan to help guide the district through the transition."  Photo: FreeDigitalPhotos.netThe days of pencil and paper are coming to a close as students use the technology at their homes and in their pockets more and more for everyday school assignments. "We are looking to shift away from the traditional model of transferring knowledge to students," said Westford Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Kerry Clery. The 2014-2015 school year was year one of the five-year implementation plan, which passed unanimously at the School Committee’s Sept. 23 meeting. Today’s students need to learn skills such as critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration in a connected classroom if they are to be prepared for the jobs of the future, according to Westford Public Schools Director of Digital Learning Julie Baudreau. "We need to incorporate these as part of the 21st-century classroom," Baudreau said, "It’s really important for students that we develop skills that will be useful for them in the future." Students aren’t the only ones who need to adapt to a digital classroom. Teachers need to learn new instructional practices to help teach students how to excel in the online world, according to Baudreau. "Now, our students live in two worlds. We have the physical world and we have the online world," said Baudreau, "We need to make sure… our teachers have the skills to help the students learn these skills online as well as the physical world." Read more... Source: Westford Eagle

Sheena Faherty, Inquirer Staff Writer reports, "It's hard to teach empathy in the classroom, yet it's one of the foundations of the doctor-patient relationship. How well physicians can put themselves in their patients' shoes is directly linked with patient satisfaction." Photo: Philly.com"When I was in med school, no one told me how to do that," said Dennis Novack, professor of medicine and associate dean of medical education at Drexel University College of Medicine. "You could watch your mentors, if you were lucky. Or make mistakes."Numerous studies have shown patients with empathetic caregivers are more likely to stick to their doctor's treatment plan, leading to better health results. Doctors who can better understand their patients also are more satisfied with their work. And hospitals know how important patient satisfaction is to their bottom line, now that it is a factor Medicare considers in reimbursement.Medical educators at Drexel have designed a tool for Internet-based training for medical students using actors - or "standardized patients," as they're called in this context. Students get to practice what have been deemed the most effective communication techniques in a simulated setting before they face real patients.The patented program develops "more advanced skills, such as giving bad news, or counseling a mom who is reluctant to give immunizations to a child. These are dicey, difficult conversations," said Novack, who codeveloped the program. During medical care, you're "dealing with strong emotions. How do you manage when a patients' family is mad at you? What do you do?"The program fills the need for this kind of training by allowing students to interact with trained actors through a webcam. It's like a Skype session on educational steroids.During training, students are evaluated on their performance by the "patient" and receive immediate feedback on strengths and weaknesses from the actors, who have been rigorously trained in what to look for. The program also lets students see a recorded clip of their performance, as well as prepared scenes of an expert breaking bad news to a patient."Learning in clinical medicine is always multimodal," said program cocreator Christof Daetwyler, associate professor in the department of family, community, and preventive medicine at Drexel. To fully understand the skills, he said, it helps to see a master do it first.Read more... Source: Philly.com

"The right mix of government and free market strategy can get distance learning to bridge that critical skill gap between graduates and jobs." writes Prithwis Mukerjee, engineer by education, a programmer by passion and a teacher by profession, Praxis Business School, Kolkata. Photo: Swarajya Distance learning using the internet, that allows students anywhere in the country to learn from the best teachers, is old news. We have heard of Massively Open Online Courseware (MOOCs) popularised by Coursera and Udemy, applauded the good work done by the Khan Academy and proudly talk about the gigabytes of— rather boring—videos on Youtube by IIT professors under the NPTEL programme. But none of this has had any impact on the critical skill gap that separates students who graduate from India’s colleges from the jobs that await them in a booming economy.Institutions like IITs, IIMs, NITs, Presidency University and others may be doing well, but there are another 600 degree-granting institutions with more than 35,000 affiliated colleges that have lost the plot completely. Most of these have inadequate infrastructure, teachers who are barely competent or rarely in the classroom, outdated syllabi and an academic atmosphere vitiated by student politics. And yet it is to colleges like these that nearly two crore students—potential contributors to India’s demographic dividend—have to turn to, to realise their dreams of getting a bachelor’s degree.Reforming college education in India is beyond the ability of mere mortals. A complex mess of policy, bureaucracy, corruption, hypocrisy, xenophobia and old-fashioned stupidity ensures that modern management techniques cannot be used. Private investors are not allowed to make profits from education but are harassed for bribes by venal regulatory bodies, and the government has neither the means nor the ability to deliver. So, instead of platitudes about "revamping the system", let us explore an alternate architecture that will deliver education and help students find jobs.The only way to bypass the local college is to resort, once again, to web-based distance learning mechanisms where the technology necessary for creating and distributing online content is available either free or at a nominal cost. The primary content would be videos recorded with a webcam and uploaded onto Youtube. The free Google Hangout-on-Air feature allows not only webcam videos but also screen capture from Powerpoint-style slide decks or any other program. At the student’s end, all that is needed is a computer and broadband access, and given the amount of money spent on private tuitions, this is an investment that most students and their parents would be happy to make if they see value.But to show value, we need to cross two big hurdles, namely an economic model for content creation and a stamp of accreditation on the education delivered.Read more... Source: Swarajya

Photo: Jennifer PattersonJennifer Patterson, the lead product manager at KnowledgeWave, just want to share with you some of the rationale and expertise that is behind the design of KLS, the KnowledgeWave Learning Site.Photo: Jennifer PattersonI have always been interested in different approaches to teaching and learning. (So interested that I passed up scholarship money at a nearby college in favor of a school 2,000 miles away because it featured a fascinating academic schedule. Which I loved. But that’s a different story - back to KLS.)Meet Malcolm Knowles I’m still intrigued by various approaches to learning, and I now have an obvious professional interest in understanding how to help adults learn to use software technology. I recently spent time studying Malcolm Knowles, who used the term andragogy to describe his ideas about adult learning.Knowles writes that andragogy is a "model of assumptions about learning or a conceptual framework that serves as a basis for an emergent theory."[1] Knowles was a pioneer in thinking about adult education and how it might differ from approaches to childhood education. Every training initiative geared toward adult employees can benefit from a working knowledge of his framework.Read more... Source: Pulse

Follow on Twitter as @eSN_MerisMeris Stansbury, Managing Editor writes, "National survey, fall conference and online resources will give educators and policymakers unprecedented levels of collaboration and information."  Photo: eCampus NewsSeveral nonprofit and higher education organizations are collaborating to create new resources and opportunities in response to growing interest in competency-based education (CBE). This work includes the largest survey to date of institutions developing CBE programs and a national conference this fall to listen to the challenges and barriers faced by institutions and to help them learn more about what it takes to design high-quality programs that are competency-based.The multi-pronged effort is led by Public Agenda, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and public engagement organization, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Lumina Foundation. The effort responds to calls from institutions of higher education and policymakers for more resources and support to help guide the planning and development of high-quality competency-based degrees, certificates and other postsecondary credentials. The Association of American Colleges & Universities (AACU) is the Sponsoring Organization of Integrative Liberal Learning. The American Council on Education (ACE), the Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN) and EDUCAUSE are sponsors. The thought partners are the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) and Quality Matters.In addition to the survey and conference, the organizations are researching models, trends and gaps in knowledge around CBE, and will organize the findings into a publicly available online source of information. For institutions that want to adopt CBE programs, the group is creating a set of research-based design elements of CBE programs and an online tool to help institutions build programs around those elements.Read more... Source: eCampus News