Online Education Evolves as It Draws More Students

Online Education Evolves as It Draws More Students

Cynthia Stebbins loved her first two years at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, but after she got married in May of 2013, she found herself in a bind. Her husband, Cody, who is in the Air Force, was transferred to Scott Air Force Base in Illinois.

Stebbins, 21, didn’t want to have a long-distance marriage, so she decided to finish her bachelor’s degree the 21st-century way: online. She’ll graduate next spring from CSU with a degree in psychology.

Although Stebbins sometimes misses the campus social life, she’s confident she’s getting just as rich an academic experience as when she was trekking from one classroom to another.

[Learn how to succeed in an online course.]

“The experience is similar to what it is on campus, and I appreciate that,” she says. “I don’t want my education to be different just because I’ve chosen this program.”

Whether you’re an undergrad like Stebbins who faces logistical challenges or a working student who wants a degree without giving up that salary, attending class virtually is an increasingly viable and popular option. Some universities allow students to earn their degrees entirely online; a growing number are dabbling by letting students earn a handful of credits virtually.

Nearly 460 schools offered online bachelor’s courses in 2013, according to the latest annual survey by Babson College in Massachusetts, which has been tracking the spread of online education for 11 years. And the proportion of all students, undergraduate and graduate, taking at least one online course hit a high of 33.5 percent in 2013, Babson reports.

Moving the lecture hall onto the Web isn’t always a smooth process. In April, the high-profile pilot program Semester Online was discontinued; a consortium of 10 universities – Boston College,Northwestern University and Washington University in St. Louis among them – had tried offering for-credit virtual classes to their own students and to attendees of other colleges interested in transferring the credits.

[Understand the common terms used in online education.]

The organizer, Maryland-based 2U, declined to comment but said in a written statement that it found “significant challenges related to the complexities of a consortium structure.” The firm continues to provide software solutions to individual schools developing online offerings, and in October will be working on its first online undergraduate degree program with Simmons College School of Nursing and Health Sciences in Boston.

But the end of Semester Online shouldn’t be viewed as a sign that digitally enhanced learning is a bad idea, argues Elliott Visconsi, an English and law professor and chief academic digital officer at consortium member University of Notre Dame, which offered four undergrad courses online during the pilot.

Instructors found the teaching “to be exciting and interesting, but new and unfamiliar,” he says. While there were problems associated with students moving in and out of classes and seeking credits from other participating schools, he says, Notre Dame is now pursuing a variety of digital initiatives.

[Decide if online education is right for you.]

“Our primary goal is to give our students a world-class undergraduate experience,” he says, “and certainly digital tools and strategies are part of that puzzle.”

Arizona State University associate professor Dawn Gilpin, who teaches an online course in social media, says Web-based teaching platforms have become so sophisticated that students can easily be as engaged as they are in physical classes, if not more so.

Education is the process of facilitating learning

Education is the process of facilitating learning

Education is the process of facilitating learning. Knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits of a group of people are transferred to other people, through storytelling, discussion, teaching, training, or research. Education frequently takes place under the guidance of educators, but learners may also educate themselves in a process called autodidactic learning. Any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts may be considered educational.
Education is commonly and formally divided into stages such as preschool, primary school, secondary school and then college, university or apprenticeship. The methodology of teaching is called pedagogy.
A right to education has been recognized by some governments. At the global level, Article 13 of the United Nations’ 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognizes the right of everyone to an education.Although education is compulsory in most places up to a certain age, attendance at school often isn’t, and a minority of parents choose home-schooling, sometimes with the assistance of modern electronic educational technology (also called e-learning). Education can take place in formal or informal settings.

EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY

EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY

EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY IS THE EFFECTIVE USE OF TECHNOLOGICAL TOOLS IN LEARNING. AS A CONCEPT, IT CONCERNS AN ARRAY OF TOOLS, SUCH AS MEDIA, MACHINES AND NETWORKING HARDWARE, AS WELL AS CONSIDERING UNDERLYING THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES FOR THEIR EFFECTIVE APPLICATION.

Educational technology is not restricted to high technology.Nonetheless, electronic educational technology, also called e-learning, has become an important part of society today, comprising an extensive array of digitization approaches, components and delivery methods. For example, m-learning emphasizes mobility, but is otherwise indistinguishable in principle from educational technology.
Educational technology includes numerous types of media that deliver text, audio, images, animation, and streaming video, and includes technology applications and processes such as audio or video tape, satellite TV, CD-ROM, and computer-based learning, as well as local intranet/extranet and web-based learning. Information and communication systems, whether free-standing or based on either local networks or the Internet in networked learning, underlie many e-learning processes.
Theoretical perspectives and scientific testing influence instructional design. The application of theories of human behavior to educational technology derives input from instructional theory, learning theory, educational psychology, media psychology and human performance technology.
Educational technology and e-learning can occur in or out of the classroom. It can be self-paced, asynchronous learning or may be instructor-led, synchronous learning. It is suited to distance learning and in conjunction with face-to-face teaching, which is termed blended learning. Educational technology is used by learners and educators in homes, schools (both K-12 and higher education), businesses, and other settings.

Economics is the social science

Economics is the social science

Economics is the social science that describes the factors that determine the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services.
The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek οἰκονομία from οἶκος (oikos, “house”) and νόμος (nomos, “custom” or “law”), hence “rules of the house (hold for good management)”.Political economy’ was the earlier name for the subject, but economists in the late 19th century suggested “economics” as a shorter term for “economic science” to establish itself as a separate discipline outside of political science and other social sciences.
Economics focuses on the behavior and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Consistent with this focus, primary textbooks often distinguish between microeconomics and macroeconomics. Microeconomics examines the behavior of basic elements in the economy, including individual agents and markets, their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyzes the entire economy (meaning aggregated production, consumption, savings, and investment) and issues affecting it, including unemployment of resources (labor, capital, and land), inflation, economic growth, and the public policies that address these issues (monetary, fiscal, and other policies).
Other broad distinctions within economics include those between positive economics, describing “what is,” and normative economics, advocating “what ought to be”; between economic theory and applied economics; between rational and behavioral economics; and between mainstream economics (more “orthodox” and dealing with the “rationality-individualism-equilibrium nexus”) and heterodox economics (more “radical” and dealing with the “institutions-history-social structure nexus”).
Besides the traditional concern in production, distribution, and consumption in an economy, economic analysis may be applied throughout society, as in business, finance, health care, and government. Economic analyses may also be applied to such diverse subjects as crime,education,the family, law, politics, religion, social institutions, war,science,and the environment.Education, for example, requires time, effort, and expenses, plus the foregone income and experience, yet these losses can be weighted against future benefits education may bring to the agent or the economy. At the turn of the 21st century, the expanding domain of economics in the social sciences has been described as economic imperialism.

How Much Do Teachers Hate Common Core?

As more and more governors and local politicians denounce Common Core initiatives, and more states officially back away from the standards, the debate over the place and effectiveness of Common Core heats up. There is a lot of talk about students, but what about teachers? After all, they are the people who are most accountable for any standards and testing systems that are put in place. They are also the ones who see firsthand how education policies impact students. So what do teachers say about Common Core and PARCC testing?

• 75 percent support Common Core, says a May 2013 American of Federation (AFT) poll that surveyed 800 teachers.
• 76 percent strongly, or somewhat, support Common Core based on an Education Next Survey from 2013.
• More than three-fourths support Common Core Standards “wholeheartedly” or with some minor reservations, according to a September 2013 National Education Association member survey.
• 73 percent of teachers that specializes in math, science, social studies and English language arts are “enthusiastic” about the implementation of Common Core standards in their classrooms, from a 2013 Primary Sources poll of 20,000 educators.

A higher amount of elementary teachers are optimistic about Common Core than their high school counterparts. A survey conducted by The Hechinger Report Scholastic and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation found that just 41 percent of high school teachers are positive about Common Core standards. A recent survey by the National Association of Elementary School Principals found that more than 80 percent of principals (out of 1,000 from 14 states) say that Common Core standards have the potential to increase student skill mastery, create meaningful assessments and improve areas like conceptual understanding.

These are just a few examples of studies of educators and administrators that relate directly to Common Core initiatives, but each one lists well over a majority who back the standards to some degree. This, despite the fact that many parents and legislators cite “unfairness” to teachers as a reason to dissolve the standards on a national level. In fact, this idea that all teachers somehow “hate” Common Core or are against the standards being taught is just not true. Yet this widely held public belief has led to even greater fervor when it comes to Common Core, PARCC testing and the related lessons in classrooms.

You may notice that many of these studies are a bit outdated. Even something from six months ago does not take teachers’ true feelings into account following teaching the standards, and facing assessments on them. Implementation aside, though, based on the criteria alone teachers appear to think that Common Core is a step in the right direction for the students in their classrooms.

Which Education Next articles were most popular in 2016?

Which Education Next articles were most popular in 2016?

Our top article of 2016 was a randomized experiment designed to measure the effect of taking students on a field trip to an art museum. The study concluded, as the authors wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times, that “art makes you smart.”

What other topics were popular?

Five of the top 20 articles for 2016 looked at some aspect of technology in education: an article on flipped classrooms, a study of the effectiveness of online learning for college students, a profile of a charter schoolthat utilizes blended learning to individualize instruction, an article “checking the facts” of a study that evaluated K12 virtual schools, a look at educational apps aimed at preschoolers.

Another five articles of the top 20 articles focused on teachers or teacher training: a critique of ed schools, a look at the role played by substitute teachers, an article describing new organizations aimed at giving teachers a greater voice in the profession, a study of the academic qualifications of today’s teachers, an article on the cost of teacher benefits, and an article on changes at Teach for America.

Five more articles looked at some aspect of charter schooling:  a look at how graduates of No Excuses charter schools are doing in college, an inside look at high-scoring BASIS charter schools, a look at the softer side of KIPP schools, an article about a blended learning charter school in L.A., and a study looking at how competition with charter schools affects district schools.

Assessment Through the Student's Eyes

Rather than sorting students into winners and losers, assessment for learning can put all students on a winning streak.

Historically, a major role of assessment has been to detect and highlight differences in student learning in order to rank students according to their achievement. Such assessment experiences have produced winners and losers. Some students succeed early and build on winning streaks to learn more as they grow; others fail early and often, falling farther and farther behind.

As we all know, the mission of schools has changed. Today's schools are less focused on merely sorting students and more focused on helping allstudents succeed in meeting standards. This evolution in the mission of schools means that we can't let students who have not yet met standards fall into losing streaks, succumb to hopelessness, and stop trying.

Our evolving mission compels us to embrace a new vision of assessment that can tap the wellspring of confidence, motivation, and learning potential that resides within every student. First, we need to tune in to the emotional dynamics of the assessment experience from the point of view of students—both assessment winners and assessment losers. These two groups experience assessment practices in vastly different ways, as shown in “The Assessment Experience,” p. 24. To enable all students to experience the productive emotional dynamics of winning, we need to move from exclusive reliance on assessments that verify learning to the use of assessments that support learning—that is, assessments for learning.