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 […]

The purpose of this single-subject case study was to document the experiences of a teacher trainee during a 12-week microteaching process in the Distance English Language Teacher Training program (DELT). The student teacher subject responded to questionnaires, submitted online dialogue journals, and answered open-ended questions before and after the practicum. The Journal of Educators Online

Post-secondary educational institutions use various means to evaluate the teaching performance of faculty members. There are benefits to effective faculty evaluation, including advancing the scholarship of teaching and learning, as well as improving the functionality and innovation of courses, curriculum, departments, and ultimately the broader community (Boyer, 1990; Glassick, Huber, & Maeroff, 1997). While there […]

Imagine a workforce made up of highly skilled individuals that have a comprehensive grasp of what is required from them on a daily basis. Not only do they have a great deal of adeptness and expertise, these employees also recognise [...]

"Community feedback and advanced analytics, combined with lesson planning and monitoring tools for teachers make this social learning platform, PRAISE, a step forward in collaborative online learning." continues Phys.Org.Photo: Phys.OrgPhoto: Carles Sierra"Feedback is essential for learning," says Carles Sierra, Research Professor at the Spanish National Research Council and coordinator of the PRAISE project. The project aims at filling a gap in online learning by creating a social network for music education with tools for giving and receiving feedback.Using PRAISE's Music Circle platform, music students can upload recordings of their playing and receive detailed feedback from other members of the community. Advanced tools let reviewers place their comments as annotations at exactly the right place in the audio signal representation."Students' peers can say "this crescendo is very nice" or "this passage is very expressive"," explains Professor Sierra. "This timeline of structured comments and this level of granularity have been lacking in online approaches to giving feedback on music."A social network of learnersAs PRAISE is a web-based social media platform, a single comment can spawn multiple comments. These discussion threads help to create a community of people giving and receiving feedback that becomes a social network of learners.Aside from human feedback, PRAISE's sophisticated tools also provide automatic feedback. Students can play a particular piece, for example, and the software will tell the student whether he or she played the right notes at the right time. Moreover, if the student submits a new recording, areas of improvement or retrogression are similarly flagged.A teaching tool with marks generationPRAISE is actually more than just a platform for giving and receiving feedback. Its tools also allow music teachers to create lesson plans and track their students' progress online.In addition, PRAISE tackles a problem faced by many Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). Since it's physically impossible for a single teacher to mark the thousands or tens of thousands of students who may follow an online offering, many MOOCs rely on peer assessment. This approach is unsatisfactory, however, because students may not give marks in the same way that the teacher would give them.Read more... Source: Phys.Org

By Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed What is so great about How Music Got Free is that Witt takes us into the minds of the people running the record company’s. (And very deeply into the mind of Doug Morris, the guy who ran Universal Music Group). Perhaps no group of executives have ever been less prepared [...]

"The hallways of Memorial Middle School in Cedar Grove are alive with the sound of music, even during the summer months." according to Joshua Jongsma, Managing Editor | Verona-Cedar Grove Times.Photo: FreeDigitalPhotos.netFor the first time, the Cedar Grove Summer Music Academy offered students a chance to hone their instrumental and vocal skills in between school years. The classes run four days a week and began June 22. The program, which ends July 16, goes for either three hours or six and a half, depending on how many fields of music a student participates in, according to course instructor Cassandra Imperatore.In its inaugural run, 32 students joined the Summer Music Academy, Imperatore said. It is offered to students of any skill level entering Grades 5-9. "[The students] have been very involved, they've been really engaged in it," Imperatore told the Times. "They're learning so much." Prior to this summer, Cedar Grove students would not start band lessons until fifth grade. Many other schools start in fourth grade, Imperatore said, so the summer program allows for local students to close the gap. The lessons include vocal, instrumental and orchestra instruction. The teaching goes beyond performances, though. The participants also learn how to compose music and the theory behind it, as taught by Melissa Hill. Music theory studies the "how and why" that makes up songs or instrumental performances, Hill said."It's everything from feeling out the rhythm to writing chords and knowing intervals between notes," Hill said.In addition to Hill and Imperatore, Bob Savino and Megan Siegel also guide the young musicians in the program. The summer lessons equate to about a half-year's worth of studies, Imperatore said. "The stuff they're learning now is material that I didn't learn until I was a junior in high school," she continued. "It's really cool."Read more... Source: NorthJersey.com

How can you get the best results from your corporate learning initiatives? Start by asking how human beings learn best. How you choose to deliver knowledge to an employee makes a difference. Most enterprises simply provide a variety of traditional … The post Why Traditional Workplace Training Falls Short appeared first on Bloomfire.

Rita Sherrow, World Scene Writer summarizes, "Dottie Piet can’t live without learning."Photo: FreeDigitalPhotos.netThe former teacher — who also writes songs and poetry, plays multiple musical instruments, does artwork and craft projects, and doesn’t have time in her day for TV — is sharing her wealth of energy and knowledge with others. "If I don’t keep learning like this, I get very bored and depressed," she said in a recent interview. "And, if it (her knowledge) can overflow and help others, that’s great. I’m glad I have people here who like to learn.""Here" is The Broadmoor Retirement Community, 8205 E. 22nd St., and the "people" are fellow residents who are attending a six-month course she is teaching on the history of music.Last week, the subject was music of the ’40s and ’50s and she dressed as Rosie the Riveter to act as emcee. Each month, she writes her own scripts and then leads the 40-plus participants through the history of an era, which includes a sing-along with videos gathered by activities director Sharon Fleming. They are songs that bring back the past, she said."Music is a tool to keep the body happy," said Piet, whose energy and enthusiasm is infectious."I have noticed in my group, they are responding with memories that they have connected to the songs, which means they are going back in their memory banks and pulling out some good, happy stuff. You are adding to your total health when you can think good thoughts."A lifelong teacher, the 76-year-old Piet retired and moved to The Broadmoor from her Broken Arrow home in 2013 after getting to a point, she said, where she had to hire people to do the things that she couldn’t do."I just finally did it and made the big move, and it’s quite a watershed moment," Piet said. "Everybody who comes here, I can see in their eyes that same feeling I had when I came. There’s a big, big adjustment period."But it was not something that slowed her down. Always working on something, she previously spent three months reading up on the latest brain research and decided to pass on what she learned to her fellow residents in a brain workshop.Each week, she spent one hour teaching a different topic about the brain — right brain, the effect of stress on the brain, sleep and the brain — and she used medical videos to explain the material."The thing that came across as the biggest point was that before 1990 they thought that once the brain aged it just went downhill and there was no saving it after that," she said. "But they found out that the brain can actually regenerate. There’s a little place in the brain known as the hippocampus (the part involved in memory development, organization and storage) and you can actually make that grow and regenerate cells through exercises and proper diet."That’s the exciting news. It gives people hope for the future, that we can do something about our health and our brain."She said she handed out summaries of the information to participants and gave them assignments like playing games and puzzles to stimulate brain activity.Read more... Additional resourcesBrain gamesThe brain is like a muscle: Wse it or lose it, researchers say.Researchers at Medical World Search suggest games like the following below can have health benefits for your brain.Braino or Scrammble board games: Word game systems based on the idea of scrambling alphabets in one's brains to form meaningful words to score points in a variety of games. Learn more at bit.ly/brainogame.Pat's Page: Involves memorizing words, then remembering them three minutes later and writing them down. Find it online at bit.ly/patspagebraingame.Game With Kids: All sorts of games involving math, reading and puzzles are available at funbrain.com.Queendom: Interactive games and exercises for the brain. Some charges may apply. Go to queendom.com.Discovery Education: All sorts of brain boosters for adults and children. Check it out at boostbraingames.Source: Tulsa World

Photo: Steve RennieSteve Rennie of Renman Music & Business reports, "Over the course of my career I’ve been asked a million times, "What is the best way to learn the music business?" Answering that question has really become something of a mission for me over the last two and a half years."Photo: hypebot.com Over the course of my career I’ve been asked a million times, "What is the best way to learn the music business?" Answering that question has really become something of a mission for me over the last two and a half years.It inspired me to start a website Renman Music & Business where aspiring artists and professionals could go to learn more about this business. If you haven’t heard about the site yet, check it out and I promise that it’s the best free resource there is to go out and get started. In this post today, I want to discuss the options you have to study and learn the music biz and give you some important points to consider if you’re seriously thinking about studying or getting a degree in the music business. Let’s get started.So how do you learn the music biz? When I started 37 years ago there were no music industry programs to take. There was no internet. There was no Youtube. There was a book called "This Business of Music" and that was it. The rest you had to learn on your own. So the first thing I learned about trying to succeed in the music business is that you need to commit to learning. I realized you have to learn as much as you can, as fast as you can, and by whatever means you can.I also learned that you need to ask questions.  There’s so much to learn about the music biz and as I like put it, "If you don’t ask, you don’t get, and you won’t learn."  The best place to get those answers is from folks who’ve already experienced what you are going through. That brings me to the third key to learning the music business: networking. To get advice from those smarter, more experienced people I learned I had to surround myself with them. Once you start meeting those folks, I found you could find a mentor who took an interest in you and helped fastback your process. You want to fast track your learning in the music business and finding a great, experienced mentor is the best way to do so.Having great mentors in my career made a huge difference because these were people who were much smarter, more experienced, and more successful than me. Almost all the successful folks in this music business were lucky enough to find some mentors along the way who helped fast track their learning. All of those mentors were serial ‘doers’ and that, by far, was the most important lesson I learned.You learn by doing in the music biz.Now that you know a bit of how you learn the music business, let’s talk about the options out there for you. A lot has changed since I grew up in the business and today you have four options to study it:  Study at college Online "music biz experts"   Free online services and blogs  Go out and do it on your own For this post, I’m going to focus on studying the music business at college.  It’s a question that I’m most frequently asked by people who aspire to be in the music business and it’s a decision that comes with a lot of money attached to it.Read more...Source: hypebot.com

Follow on Twitter as @PCNHAmandaLocal libraries were able to purchase several early learning tools for kids recently through a donation from the Bay County Public Library Foundation.Malena Zelaya, 7, learns about the solar system during an interactive computer game on July 7. Three Early Literacy Stations have been set up for children at the Bay County Public Library. Photo: The News HeraldThe foundation provided $22,000 for eight early literacy stations. The stations — touchscreen computers loaded with about 70 educational games and activites — were distributed throughout Northwest Regional Library System branches in Bay and Liberty Counties, with three stations at the Bay County Public Library."It’s got all kinds of neat and educational games for the kids, so this is really a big thing for us to have these new computers for the younger kids to use," said Sandra Pierce, head of youth services at the Bay County Public Library.Pierce said library had not had much time to explore the programs yet since the stations only arrived last week, but already she has found games that are challenging even for adults. "They’re basically for kids between 2 and 8 years old, but even older kids will enjoy them," she said.The stations, including a bilingual Spanish edition, include games designed to help children learn basic math, science, reading and critical thinking skills, but also about history, geography, music and more.Read more... Source: The News Herald

The other day I had the chance to sit down for a bit with an old colleague. We spent some time reminiscing about the old days and I was excited to hear that he is still with the company and enjoying what he does. Then came the fun part. He asked about what I was […] The post 4 Keys to Effectively Evaluating you E-Learning Initiatives appeared first on Atrixware E-Learning Solutions.

Photo: Tambay A. Obenson"This is the kind of wonderfully atypical Civil Rights-era story that gets me excited!" according to Tambay A. Obenson | Shadow and Act.Margot Lee Shetterly. Photo: NASA/David C. BowmanAuthor Margot Lee Shetterly’s book, "Hidden Figures," which actually won't be published until next year, via HarperCollins, has been optioned for Ted Melfi to direct (he's the director of last year's acclaimed dramedy "St. Vincent," which starred Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy, and Naomi Watts. Terrence Howard played a supporting role in the film, which was Melfi's feature directorial debut).Shetterly's "Hidden Figures" tells the untold true story of the African American women mathematicians - Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughan, Kathryn Peddrew, Sue Wilder, Eunice Smith and Barbara Holley - who worked at NASA during the Civil Rights era. The book will tell their story through the personal accounts of 4 specific women that then-NASA staffers referred to as "the colored computers." Shetterly, whose father was one of the first African American engineers employed by NASA, is a journalist.According to Deadline, the book was optioned and developed by producer Donna Gigliotti (producer of Oscar-caliber fare like "Shakespeare In Love" and "Silver Linings Playbook"), with Allison Schroeder penning the screenplay adaptation, which Fox is in talks to acquire, with an early 2016 production start date eyed.Unfortunately, the book won't be out until next year; but I did come across the following statement from the author on her motivations for writing it: "You've heard the names John Glenn, Alan Shepard and Neil Armstrong. What about Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughan, Kathryn Peddrew, Sue Wilder, Eunice Smith or Barbara Holley? Most Americans have no idea that from the 1940s through the 1960s, a cadre of African-American women formed part of the country’s space work force, or that this group—mathematical ground troops in the Cold War—helped provide NASA with the raw computing power it needed to dominate the heavens...Check out the author's website here, which is where I lifted the above statement.Read more... Source: Indie Wire (blog)

There are restrictions on how much time an employee can be asked to stay behind after hours, which means that the amount of time a worker has to complete their tasks is somewhat fixed. Luckily time management skills can be learned to ensure that the work is submitted on time. Furthermore, the best part is...Read More

Knowing how to set up Moodle courses is essential for any and all Moodle LMS administrators. You can only add new courses if you have Moodle administrator, course creator, or Moodle manager rights. 

"Space  Throughout history the misuse of the concept of space has wreaked havoc in physics. Judging by the many strange comments on articles at MyNews24, confusion about this insidious ‘thing’ called space is rife." reports Sean Brennan. Mosaic from Pompeii depicting Plato's academyBefore I begin, I wish to state unequivocally that space is nothing.  I also wish to also state that I am not saying that there are no known or as yet undiscovered particles in our universe amongst the spaces between larger entities.To understand how we think of space, let us look at the history of the concept. The ancient Greeks had assumed that the universe was finite. But when the Greek atomists put forth the idea of empty space as a separate reality, distinct from matter, they were driven to accept the idea of an infinite universe. For what could possibly limit the extent of empty space?If empty space was nothing and yet a reality, there didn’t seem any sense to the claim that it could stop. After all, nothingness has no edge or boundary, so what could possibly stop, or end? Those clever Greeks didn’t want to look like idiots and say that the nothingness only extended so far and beyond that; was really, really nothing,(like their present economic situation)Go to this link, and ask yourself; what is all that black stuff, outside of the galaxies, stars and space that surrounds this artists inflating universe depiction? http://cdn.phys.org/newman/gfx/news/hires/2015/bigbang.jpg Many misconceptions arise because the people that study our universe have to think of it as an entity in order to get their heads around this thing and depict it as such to explain their theories. I think that they cause more confusion than anything else when it comes to the common man’s understanding of the concept of the universe. Does keeping the common man happy and correctly informed rank very highly on theoretical physicists agendas?It was Aristotle that recognized that we do not start off with the concept of empty space. We rather start off by observing entities, (objects), their relative arrangement, and the changes in the arrangement. These observations then give rise to the concept of place, or position. The concept of space then merely means a sum of places.Let’s look at an example. You have an empty room, and you ask your wife what she wants to do with the space. This is a perfectly valid use of the concept of space. What you mean is; you have a sum of places; how are we going to place items in respect to one another within the surrounding walls of the room. What you definitely don’t mean is; that we have space here, do we want to move this space to the kitchen, where more space would be handier, or should we leave it where it is!This example may sound stupid, but Aristotle showed that it was this very same silliness that characterized his predecessor’s views on space. They treated space as if it were a thing with its own separate existence apart from bodies. What really is happening; is that the concept of space derives from the earlier concept of place, which refers to relationships among physical entities. Space does not exist apart from bodies (objects), simply because relationships do not exist apart from entities that are related. The distance between the tip of your nose and your screen as you read this, is a space...Next i will look into Einstein’s space, and the concepts of space-time and fields. Read more...References: http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/ssavitt/Courses/Phil462A/Aristotle%20on%20Space.pdfWhat is Space by David Harriman. (Lecture/adaptation)  https://einstein.stanford.edu/index.htmlLeonard Peikoff. "Philosophy: Who Needs It" (book)http://www.catholicstand.com/kalam-cosmological-argument-fails/ Source: News24 

Last week, we sent out a survey to our customers regard […]The post Survey Winners! appeared first on eLearning Brothers.

The face of the "average" college student is changing. Seventy-five percent of today’s students (mostly adult learners) are juggling some combination of family commitment, job, and education, while commuting to campus, according to Complete College America.1 Growing demands placed on working adult learners can make higher education seem unattainable, inflexible, and unrealistic. For too many people […]

Photo: Geoffrey Mock"To understand Newton's genius, Duke professor recreates the intellectual world of 1700." according to Geoffrey Mock, Manager of Internal Communications, Duke Today.The argument that Isaac Newton was the greatest scientist ever gets a lot of support these days, but there’s one important person who might disagree: Newton himself.NewtonIn his new book "Newton," Duke philosophy professor Andrew Janiak makes the case for considering Newton as Newton himself did - a "natural philosopher." This isn't just a quirk of language; Janiak says it's essential to understanding his remarkable achievements.Born on Christmas Day in 1642, Newton benefited from what we call the Scientific Revolution, but Janiak writes that the word "scientist" didn't come into use until more than two centuries later. There was no consensus on issues such as the value of math or experimental results in describing the world. The great thinkers of the time closely tied their study of the world with philosophical discussions of the nature of matter and their belief in God.The one consensus of the great thinkers of the time was that the world ran on mechanistic principles and that the role of the scholar was to describe the method of the workings of the world, much in the way they would describe the workings of a clock. Descartes, for example, believed planets moved around the sun because of a vortex in which particles carried the planets in their orbit.Janiak said Newton's genius was to ignore all this. His major work, "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" - frequently referred to as "Principia" - represents a break from the beliefs of the time and constitutes Newton's defense against criticisms from leading philosophers of the day, particularly Gottfried Leibniz and his followers.Portrait of Isaac Newton, around 1715. Photo: English School via Wikimedia CommonsBelow, Janiak discusses his book in a conversation with Geoffrey Mock of Duke Today. Read more... Source: Duke Today

I have vague memories of elementary school, and while m […]The post Bite-Size eLearning with the Segmenting Principle appeared first on eLearning Brothers.

"Not everyone can say they had a teacher that was recognized by the White House itself. That is not the case for former students of Melissa Colonis’ math class." continues wlfi.com. http://wlfi.com/2015/07/13/local-math-teacher-recognized-by-white-house/Colonis, now a calculus and algebra teacher at Jefferson High School, was recognized for her work at Tecumseh Junior High School where she taught seventh-grade math. She was awarded the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching, and News 18 This Morning spoke to her about the accomplishment.Two teachers were chosen from each state, and Colonis said she learned of her big win at the beginning of July while on a college tour with her son and husband.When we asked her why she taught, Colonis said she thinks that’s what she was meant to do.Read more... Source: wlfi.com

By: Cassie Lipp, University of Cincinnati English composition and rhetoric of law professor Cynthia Ris learns how to best facilitate an online learning community both through research with her past classes and collaboration with the larger UC community. "I’m looking to see how I can help students’ facility with working online and especially improve their communication [...]

by Cassidy Trowbridge, Phoenix Business Journal Arizona State University’s model of inclusiveness vs. exclusivity has expanded even further into Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. MOOCs are online classes that the public can attend for free, ranging in topics and experts. Many MOOCs offer paid certificates and a smaller amount offer college credit. ASU has partnered [...]