Volume 11, Issue 1 - April 2007

Blended Learning and Localness: The Means and the End

A. Frank Mayadas, Program Officer, The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Anthony G. Picciano, Professor, School of Education, Hunter College

Blended learning can be seen as the means to achieving a greater sense of "localness" on the part of colleges and universities. Blended learning has been evolving for several years and while definitions vary from one institution to another, it is defined in this paper essentially as a combination of...

Online Instruction as Local Education: CUNY's Online Baccalaureate

George Otte, The City University of New York

The City University of New York is taking a new, local approach to online instruction: offering an online baccalaureate for degree completers, designed for NYC students who have "stopped out" in good academic standing and need the "any time" flexibility of asynchronous learning to finish the degree. What is especially...

Pace University, Blended Learning and Localness: A Model that Works

David Sachs, Pace University

Several forms of blended learning at Pace University offer flexible options for learners, and its growth reflects its appeal to traditional and corporate learners....

Extending Online and Blended Learning to Corporations in the New York Metropolitan Region

Robert Ubell, Dean, School of Professional Education Stevens Institute of Technology

WebCampus.Stevens, the online graduate education and corporate training unit of Stevens Institute of Technology, delivers one of the largest and most effective ALN and blended programs of any college or university in the New York metropolitan region. Under a newly awarded Sloan Foundation grant, the school is extending its engineering...

Expanding Demand for Online Higher Education: Surveying Prospective Students

Richard Garrett, Senior Analyst, Eduventures, LLC

The Eduventures survey examined next-generation demand for online postsecondary education, assessing online experience, delivery mode and marketing channels preferences, and perceptions of price, quality and location, identifying key takeaways in each area....

Online Community of Inquiry Review: Social, Cognitive, and Teaching Presence Issues

D. R. Garrison, University of Calgary

This paper explores four issues that have emerged from the research on social, cognitive, and teaching presence in an online community of inquiry. The early research in the area of online communities of inquiry has raised several issues with regard to the creation and maintenance of social, cognitive and teaching...

An Empirical Verification of the Community of Inquiry Framework

J. B. Arbaugh, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh

Despite the explosion of empirical research on online learning effectiveness over the last decade, development and acceptance of theoretical frameworks unique to the online learning environment are still relatively lacking. While there are several emerging models, one that has attracted some of the most attention is the Community of Inquiry...

Student Satisfaction with Asynchronous Learning

Charles Dziuban, Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness, University of Central Florida
Patsy Moskal, Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness, University of Central Florida
Jay Brophy, Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness, University of Central Florida
Peter Shea, University at Albany

The authors discuss elements that potentially impact student satisfaction with asynchronous learning: the media culture, digital, personal and mobile technologies, student learning preferences, pedagogy, complexities of measurement, and the digital generation. They describe a pilot study to identify the underlying dimensions of student satisfaction with online learning and present examples...

Are We Re-Marginalizing Distance Education Students and Teachers?

Melody M. Thompson, The Pennsylvania State University

Changes in the language we use to talk about our activities in service of this mission and a concomitant increased emphasis on blended learning are two trends that emphasize the importance retaining important meaning and knowledge associated with earlier practice and do not limit our thinking by unnecessarily circumscribed discourse....

Research on Online Learning

Karen Swan, Research Center for Educational Technology, Kent State University

Over the past decade, the Internet has had a profound impact on higher education by enabling the phenomenal growth of online learning. Moreover, just as we were getting used to fully online courses,blended courses, courses which integrate online and face-to-face instruction, seem to be growing in similar, perhaps even more...