Several folks on the Sloan-C listserv have raised a strong second line of argument in the Blackboard prior art fight. In addition to identifying specific LMS precursors that had most or all of the functionality outlined in the claims, we should be building the case that LMS’s were directly and consciously copied from and evolved [...]
I just read a great article by Karen Swan called “Immediacy, Social Presence, and Asynchronous Discussion,” published in one of the Sloan-C’s books. (Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be available online.) The paper appears to be an empirical study to follow up an earlier paper by Swan and several colleagues (which is available online, albeit [...]
From the Sloan Consortium, whose web site is turning out to be a gold mine of solid higher ed distance learning research, come articles on teaching electronics and Chemistry through distance learning. They used multimedia simulations of electronics in the former case while resorting to kitchen chemistry assignments in the latter case. For both courses, [...]
This article [PDF], though two years old now, has some still eye-opening figures on distance learning adoption in higher ed.
Among the more interesting findings:
Nearly one third of all higher ed institutions and one half of all public higher ed institutions now offer complete degree programs online.
On average, in institutions that had distance learning programs in [...]
Posted in Higher Education | Also tagged edunomics |
