While this timeline is not comprehensive and I can think of alternative items to include, it does provide enough of a perspective to help us understand how far we have progressed with online learning.
Source: Social Learning Blog
Archives For Online Learning
Pearson Plc chief learning officer Sir Michael Barber argues an avalanche is coming to Higher Ed that is caused by:
MOOCs, globalization, technology change, rising educational costs, changes to the value of a degree. Bottom line: more competition.
Pearson has made available Barber’s report An Avalanche is Coming: Higher education and the revolution ahead for free.
MIT’s New Free Courses May Threaten (and Improve) the Traditional Model, Program’s Leader Says – Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education via kwout
In an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education-Wired Campus blogger Jeffery Young, Rafael Reif, MIT’s provost stated:
My point is that for a while I view this as augmenting the education you get on a residential model. And yes, it may threaten, and if it does the residential model has to get better. Our objective is to actually use MITx to even increase further what we do on campus, to make it stronger and to be able to resist and survive and do very well in this potential disruptive situation.
To those who are stuck in the delivery mode of educational content MITx and all other forms of online learning or mobile will be a threat. To those who view online and mobile learning technologies as tools that can be used enhance learning this will be an opportunity to learn from the best and radically improve the academy. Well positioned and implemented mobile and online technologies can shift the delivery of content to outside of class (where it belongs) allowing the instructors and students to use valuable class time to go deeper and explore the application and integration of that content in meaningful ways.
Helping students to assess high volumes of information that are available through many digital means and also helping them make the meaningful connections which are essential to learning are a fundamental part of the roles instructors must play in 21st century learning environments.
Is it Live or is it Internet? Experimental Estimates of the Effects of Online Instruction on Student Learning via kwout
Students in a large introductory microeconomics course at a major research university were randomly assigned to live lectures versus watching these same lectures in an internet setting, where all other factors (e.g., instruction, supplemental materials) were the same.
Contrary to the claims that are being made in this working paper, lecture capture CANNOT be referred to as online learning. The working paper Is it Live or is it Internet? Experimental Estimates of the Effects of Online Instruction on Student Learning is a better example of what not to do with online learning than it is an example of face2face instruction being superior to online instruction. The paper also assumes that traditional lectures represent good instruction–which is a false assumption. At best the results of this investigation reveal that poor face2face lectures make for even poorer online instruction. This NOT online learning!
