Follow on Twitter as @4OnlineLearningPatricia Pedraza-Nafziger, BellaOnline's Distance Learning Editor summarizes, "Today, teachers’ roles are changing from instructing students to facilitating learning. Learning activities that promote group interaction are used as teaching strategies to broaden knowledge bases in classroom environments." Photo: FreeDigitalPhotos.netStudents form small groups to share concepts and work toward solutions for classroom projects; this strategy is known as "collaborative learning." Peer-to-peer learning is similar to collaborative learning but aligns more with mentoring, in which one student leads and guides another student or group of students through a problem-solving situation or project. Collaborative and peer-to-peer learning serve their own purposes.In a face-to-face classroom situation, conducting collaborative and peer-to-peer learning exercises is manageable because the time and space for them have already been established. Implementing these techniques in an online environment can be a bit more challenging. With the increased use of social media, the responsibility falls less on the instructors and more on students. Teachers can create virtual teams consisting of three or four students. They can recommend universally compatible and user-friendly collaboration tools, such as Skype, and share details of project requirements as well as timeframes and due dates for projects. With these small steps, instructors have created an avenue for peer-to-peer learning. Given a thorough set of instructions for guidance and logistical responsibilities such as selecting team leaders, each team can rely on its leader as a project manager in addition to relying on the instructor. This creates a shift from teaching to facilitating a classroom environment and from teacher-student learning to peer-to-peer or collaborative learning.Read more...Source: BellaOnline

2015 DISTANCE TEACHING & LEARNING CONFERENCE Distance Education Professional Development University of Wisconsin-Madison, Division of Continuing Studies Editor’s Note: This year will be the 31st annual Distance Teaching & Learning Conference hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Distance Education Professional Development (DEPD) group. Held in Madison, Wisconsin from August 11-13 this year, this event draws […]

Idaho State University takes open approach to faculty and student use of iPads in the humanities. eCampus News

According to head of the Russian Federal Agency for international cooperation, establishing the BRICS Network University will broaden the access to higher education for the young people from the bloc’s member countries. Sputnik News    

Microsoft researchers are at the forefront of efforts to help people without a machine learning background teach their systems to get better based on experience. Microsoft The next evolution of machine learning: Machine teaching

By Larry Dignan, ZD Net MIT said it has begun using artificial intelligence and big data techniques to better predict which students will drop out from open online courses. The news, which was detailed at a conference on artificial intelligence in education last week, is notable for a few reasons. First, online education is promising, but [...]

by Tim Stephens, UC Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz faculty venturing into the brave new world of online education are finding that a well-designed online course can be more accessible, and may even provide a better educational experience for students, than some traditionally taught courses. This is especially true for courses that large numbers of students [...]

By Joshua Bolkan, Campus Technology A new survey of students enrolled in massive open online courses (MOOCs) suggests that the courses are supplementing traditional higher education forms and "democratizing learning." Researchers from Duke University studied "13 free, open-access digital courses offered by Duke using the Coursera platform," according to a news release, and found that the [...]

This article explores the literature that focuses on the various roles librarians and libraries play in distance education settings. Learners visit libraries either in person or via networked computing technology to ask for help with their online courses. Questions range from how to upload a document with a learning management system, to how to use […]

Pricing online courses is an important issue for managing online education. This research note reports a statistical analysis of price differences between online courses and on-campus courses at 103 US educational institutions based on the data available on the Internet. The finding indicates that educational institutions set significantly lower prices of their online courses than […]