Inside Higher Ed’s third annual survey of college and university faculty members and campus leaders in educational technology aims to understand how these groups perceive and practice online learning and other emerging opportunities for delivering course content. Some of the questions addressed in the study are: Can online courses achieve learning outcomes that are equivalent to in- person courses? What are the most important quality indicators of an online education? How does the quality of online courses compare with the quality of in- person courses? To what extent have faculty members and technology administrators experienced online learning themselves, as students? To what extent have faculty taught online, hybrid, and face-to-face courses? For those who have not taught online, why is that? How supportive are institutions of online learning? Which should cost the student more — online degree programs or those delivered face to face? Who should be responsible for creating and marketing online degree programs? Are institutions expanding online learning? Should they do so? To what extent do faculty feel that they are appropriately consulted in this decision- making process? How do faculty use learning management systems (LMS) and early warning systems? Snapshot of Findings Few faculty members (9 percent) strongly agree that online courses can achieve student learning outcomes that are at least equivalent to those of in- person courses. Academic technology administrators are more likely (36 percent) to strongly agree with this statement. Asked to rate the importance of factors reflecting quality in online education, faculty members and academic technology administrators alike say it is "very important" that an online course or program "provides meaningful interaction between students and instructors" (80 percent for faculty, 89 percent for administrators), "is offered by an accredited institution" (76 vs. 84 percent), "has been independently certified for quality" (66 vs. 52 percent), and "leads to academic credit" (50 vs. 68 percent). While a larger proportion of technology officers than faculty members say online courses are of better quality than in-person courses in a set of eight areas, in neither group did any of the eight areas garner a majority reporting this view. But faculty members thought online courses could be at least as good as in-person during class and 77 percent of faculty say the same about the ability to reach "at-risk" students. Very few faculty members (7 percent) believe the tuition for online courses should be higher than for face-to-face degree programs. A much smaller proportion of faculty who have taught online courses believe online courses should have a lower tuition than face- to-face programs (20 percent), while nearly half of their peers who have never taught an online course (48 percent) believe that this should be the case. More technology administrators (53 percent) than faculty members (32 percent) have taken an online course for credit. Nearly half of those who have taught an online course (49 percent) have also taken an online course as a student, compared to less than a quarter (23 percent) of those who have never taught an online course. About one in three professors say they have taught an online course, with some variation across position type. Among those who have never taught an online course, the three main reasons they give are never having been asked, not being interested, and not believing that online classes have educational value. More than 8 in 10 instructors say they have converted a face-to-face course to a hybrid course. The majority report that this conversion decreased face-to-face time. Half (51 percent) of faculty believe improving the educational experience for students by introducing more active learning in the course is a very important reason for converting face-to-face courses to blended or hybrid courses. Nearly three-quarters of faculty believe that professors own the online course content and material they create. Less than half of faculty and technology administrators strongly agree that their institution offer instructors strong support for online learning, as measured by eight indicators. Nearly all professors (96 percent) agree that institutions should produce their own online degree programs and be responsible for marketing them (85 percent). About one-third of faculty strongly agree that their institution is planning to expand online course offerings, though only about one-sixth strongly agree that their institution should do so. A larger proportion of those who have taught an online course than their peers who have never done so strongly agree to the above two statements. Most faculty do not feel that they have been appropriately involved with decision making surrounding the expansion of online course offerings. A small fraction of faculty believe that spending on IT infrastructure (8 percent) and digital initiatives (7 percent) is too high. Faculty are split on whether spending in these areas are too low or just about right. The majority of faculty always use learning management systems (LMS) to share syllabus information with students (78 percent), record grades (58 percent), and communicate with students (52 percent). Only 20 percent of faculty members always use the LMS for lecture capture. Only 15 percent of faculty strongly agree that digital humanities has improved their teaching, 14 percent strongly agree that it has improved their institution, and 23 percent strongly agree that digital humanities has improved their research. The vast majority of faculty (89 percent) say their institution uses an early warning system, and 81 percent believe that those warning systems help students make significant learning gains. The full report can be downloaded here.

World Teacher’s Day is coming up on Monday, October 5, 2014. Educators around the globe should be celebrated and appreciated for their dedication to education. I received an email asking everyone to get involved to help promote education for all students around the world. You can play a role in advancing the global cause of the teaching profession on World Teachers’ Day. On October 5, tell the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, that you support quality education for all and the global campaign to get all children into school. You can send your message by clicking here:  http://www.5oct.org/2014/. Do what you can and celebrate world teacher’s day by doing something special or kind for your children’s teacher(s) or your colleagues. Hopefully admins will follow suit with their faculty and staff across the globe.

Hey guys, today I’m sharing with you a set of black leather textures. I’m pretty sure you will find good use for them. As before, you are free to use them for both personal and commercial projects. Enjoy! Download all textures as ZIP from copy.com (43.4Mb) Did you like these textures? Let us know by leaving a comment, and you can even post a link if you used them in your artwork. Related Posts Free Texture Friday - Abstract Grunge 4 Free Texture Friday - Crystallized Silica Free Texture Friday - Vintage Stone Wall 2 Free Texture Friday - Grunge Metal 2 Free Texture Friday - Grunge Screens

Since the open discussion at BbWorld where NIU shared that we’ve been working on some system tweaks as well as a custom building block for providing an alternative reporting format for Bb enterprise surveys and course evaluations, we’ve conducted a very small pilot of the tool this summer and continued efforts on an initial draft of a building block that provides an alternate report format. For those interested in learning more about our efforts, I recorded this screencast demo of the functionality at this point that I can share with those who would like to see the building block deployed within our dev environment. I tried to avoid as much technical-specifics as possible and rather just show the workflows and functionality tweaks that we’ve envisioned. A decision still hasn’t been made institutionally whether we will continue to pursue a wider pilot of the tool with additional building block enhancements to be requested, or look at other 3rd party tools. For follow-up on any additional technical details about the tweaks and building block depicted, please contact Ruperto Herrera (rherrera@niu.edu) and Matt Kacskos (mkacskos1@niu.edu) who have done all the technical development work.

This Tuesday, October 7, 2014 has been designated as Connected Librarian Day as part of the many Connected Educators Month events and will serve as a Library 2.014 pre-conference event hosted by Steve Hargadon and other online conference volunteers. This is an open, online, and free event sponsored by Follett and The Center for International Scholarship in School Libraries (CISSL) at Rutgers.  Join us for special presentations by: Heidi Neltner on "Your Stakeholder Connected Librarian Toolkit," Judy O’Connell on "Leadership in a connected age: change, challenge and productive chaos," Michelle Luhtala on "Flipped Learning and the Essential Tools to Get you There," Patrice Bryan & Darcy Coffta on "Schools’ Vortex: Innovative Library Makerspaces," Matthew Winner & Sherry Gick on "When Sherry Met Matthew: Finding Your Educational Soulmate and Helping Kids to Rule the World," Jennifer LaGarde on "Imagining Library Spaces of the Future, Today," Special opening and closing sessions with Britten Follett, Ross Todd, Shannon Miller, and our preconference co-chair, Joyce Valenza. Check out http://connectedlibrarians.com/ for more information, and be sure to share with the librarians in your schools! You can use #cld14 to share your excitement about this event with your followers, and share or embed the Connected Librarian Day Flyer on your website or social media channels.   There is a fantastic line up of speakers set for Connected Librarian Day this Tuesday. The schedule can be found here and on that page is a time and date converter to make sure you view the schedule in your time zone. Hope to see you online and happy Connected Librarian Day!

As the number of online degrees have proliferated in recent years, it is even more important for institutions to take a more thoughtful approach to program selection. Often, a university must consider key issues like course offerings and schedules, degree specialization, and admissions requirements in order to offer a competitive online degree. In this webinar offered 11/12/2014, academic leaders from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Ohio University discussed the key market forces that are present today, and how universities can best position their prospective degrees in the market. Panelists provided practical insights and recommendations on how to handle the change management for a university to offer competitive degree programs. The participants in this webinar learned about: How to effectively plan for the online marketplace, validate program expansion, and reduce risk How to influence change across the institution to prepare to take degrees online Key considerations when evaluating online program management services More details and a copy of the webinar slides, are available here.

Flowers, or blossoms, are features on plants that help with reproduction. They are frequently very pretty and colorful, so as to attract animals to help with transferring pollen. Flowers have long been admired for their beauty, and are commonly given at events such as weddings, Valentine’s Day, and other celebrations. Flowers are great for photography because of their bright vibrant colors and delicate structures: Flowersby drag0nflyawayh0me The beauty of Spring by Lazy Vlad The Daisies by Riyasat Azim Spring Blooms by Lijah Hanley Pink flowers in the autumn sun by Anastasiya Yudina flowersby rashell-stocks The cat and the daisies by David Nilsson Pyrethrum after the rain by Sergey Kohl flowes and skyby san29 Mayleen by Jacky Parker Lovers by Simran Sangha Roses by chn The comet by Andrey Morozov colourful flower drop by dini25 Orchid by Simran Sangha Apple Blossom by Ralf Stelander Raindrops On Daisies by Keith G.Hawley Peach-coloured flowers by Sashi94 The Rule of Blue by Carlton Belton colors of summer by Anna lonely flower and bokeh by Samet BIÇAKÇI macro fleur by CD photographie Remains of the Day by Dawn flower by Christophe Brutel Chamomilla by Danas Toman Field of sunflowers by Igor Goncharenko Autumn’s light by Martineb All lined up by Andy perry Summer colours by Abinav Chaudry the last ones before winter by Anna Cseresnjes Related Posts 30 Lovely Flower Photographs Bright and Sunny Photography Rocks, Stones and Pebbles in Photography 30 Marvelous Underwater Photographs 30 Photographs of Bicycles

The Library 2.014 will be October 8-9, 2014 this week and jam-packed of great sessions for librarians and educators of all content areas. According to the Learning Revolution description of the free, virtual conference, We have an amazing group of Keynote & Distinguished Speakers lined up for the Library 2.014 virtual conference, October 8th + 9th. View the conference schedule in your local time and mark your calendars for keynote speakers Samantha Adams Becker on "On the Horizon: Pressing Technologies, Trends, Challenges for Libraries," Phil Bradley the UK Search Guru, Jonathan Hernández on "Internet censorship, privacy and freedom of expression: new challenges for LIS professionals," Dr. Sandra Hirsh on "Working in a Global Environment - Success Strategies for Today’s Information Professional," Helen Partridge from the University of Southern Queensland, Pam Sandlian-Smith on "Creating Experience Libraries," Dr. Daisy Selematsela of the National Research Foundation in South Africa, Joyce Valenza of Rutgers University School of Communication & Information, and Jia Yang on "Exploring the Use of Information Visualization for Library." This year’s distinguished speakers include Stephen Abram on "7 Tactics to Gain Big Savings through Collaboration: Can we bravely take risks?," Christine Bruce, Hilary Hughes, and Ian Stoodley on "Information Experience: New approaches to theory and practice," Susan Hildreth on "Libraries as community learning partners - STEM, Maker and Badging!," Peter Morville on "The Architecture of Understanding," Michael Stephens on "Finding Balance: Reflective Practice and the Profession," Barbara Stripling on "Building a Learning Community Through a Library Learning Commons," Roy Tennant on "How to Be a 21st Century Librarian," David Weinberger on "John Henry in the Library: Algorithms vs. Humans." We certainly are! Feel free to use our promotional materials to help us share about Library 2.014, and follow the conversations at #Lib2014 for conference updates and broadening your professional network. What a great lineup scheduled this week - hope to see you there!

Recently, I had the opportunity to join my colleagues from the Online Learning Consortium (formerly Sloan-C), MERLOT, and the Emerging Technologies steering committee to share a sneak peek of what lies ahead at #et4online. We hung out to share details about the upcoming conference being held April 22-24, 2015 in Dallas, Texas. Who attends #et4online? image c/o @brocansky 6 Reasons Why You Should Join Us for #et4online Or hear what the #et4online Steering Committee Members have to say in our 1/30 Google+ Hangout ON AIR (recorded): Michelle Pacansky-Brock Conference Chair - @brocansky Jason Rhode, Assistant Conference Chair - @jasonrhode Jane Moore, MERLOT Program Chair - @janepmoore Laura Pasquini, OLC Program Chair - @laurapasquini Here are just a few of the MANY highlights for the #et4online program that we shared: The Unconference - dig into topics and direct the agenda as you like it Technology Test Kitchen - a maker space to explore, play & learn for ed tech Keynote & Plenary Speakers - talks about connection to learning, networked identity, collaborative knowledge, and then some Featured Sessions & Workshops - are just a few of the program items NOT to miss and learn from Discovery Sessions with VoiceThread - to augment interaction and learning between presenters and attendees The Launch Pad & Teacher Tank- Where #edtech start ups can show case their wares to our Ed Tech "sharks." Submission Deadline Closes February, 13, 2015 - apply now! Interested in attending (virtual or on site)? Register TODAY! Early bird pricing ends on February 25, 2015. Do you have questions about the conference or program? Leave a comment or hit me up on Twitter @jasonrhode

Discovery Education is hosting an ‘Epic Story Virtual Field Trip‘ on Wednesday, October 15, 2014, at 1pm EST. The event will last an hour and students can meet part of the Science Channel crew. Meet Wyatt Channell, Executive Producer of How the Universe Works, during our Virtual Field Trip to The Science Channel Headquarters. Learn how great stories are made and how Wyatt became an Executive Producer. Tweet and chat in your questions during the event. This is an excellent opportunity to expose students to a large audience of peers about a storytelling. Research shows when students know they have a large audience their performance and achievement is increased. This is a great opportunity to participate in an authentic writing and storytelling event for free. It will be livestreamed to don’t miss this exciting event!