Online courses cheaper to deliver

From the Chonicle of Higher Education …

At the request of the board of regents of the University of Texas System, administrators of the system's UT Telecampus conducted two studies to assess the relative cost of online delivery of university courses. The studies, which covered 2002 and 2003, did not include faculty salaries, which are the same for online or on-campus courses, or costs to develop courses, focusing instead on infrastructure required to deliver the course content to students. In both years of the studies, online delivery cost less than on-campus delivery. The studies did not evaluate the amount of time professors spent teaching–some say teaching online takes appreciably more time. Although the UT Telecampus is the university's online education organization, members of the board said the group's methodology resulted in a fair assessment. According to board member Cyndi Taylor Krier, the board was pleased with the results of the studies but wants next to investigate the relative quality of courses taught over the Web.

A+ for online education, but stigma remains

In some of my browsing I discovered a couple of letters at Network Computing worth highlighting here. If you have gone through an online university and would like to comment here on this weblog, please mail me at michael@creative-weblogging.com

Here are the NC letters.

"I agree that many online IT educational institutions suffer from a stigma, but it is not deserved."
~ Steve Delahunty

And this, part of a the extended letter from Steve responding to this article …

I received my undergraduate degree from a classroom-only college where, in the majority of classes, the only interaction among students was to see each other enter and leave the classroom. Although I have attended various graduate-level classroom courses, I obtained my MBA from the University of Phoenix online. I found the experience extremely valuable and can attest that there is more educational interaction among students in the online environment. Yes, some graduate courses include group work, and meeting in person can be helpful. However, even in classroom courses, student groups use e-mail and instant messaging extensively to collaborate.

Online law grads seek Texas bar exam

At the New York Lawyer, this story about distance learning law grads seeking to take the Texas bar exam.

The debate over whether graduates of distance-learning law schools should be allowed to take the Texas bar exam has resurfaced at the state Capitol.

State Rep. Robert Talton, a Pasadena Republican and an attorney, is sponsoring H.B. 826, which would require the Texas Supreme Court to adopt rules that would allow attorneys whose law degrees are based on study by correspondence to take the Texas exam, if they've passed another state's bar exam and are licensed to practice law in another state.

UK website for security alerts available

From PCWorld via Educause …

A new Web site called ITsafe will send security alerts to home and small-business computer users in the United Kingdom. The National Infrastructure Security Coordination Centre will run the free site, which also offers advice on protecting personal data. The government plans to issue official alerts by e-mail or text messages over mobile devices to users who sign up for the service if a particular virus or other security breach poses a significant threat and users can do something to Combat it, such as updating software or downloading security patches. The ITsafe site will not supply either. The Home Office estimates up to 10 security alerts per year based on past experience.

Educating a Net Generation

Educause has published its first web-only book, called "Educating the Net
Generation," edited by Diana Oblinger, vice president of EDUCAUSE and director of the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative, and James Oblinger, chancellor of North Carolina State University.

The e-book is available in PDF and HTML formats, with Web-only resources (further reading, video, podcasts, and useful links) listed on its home page. A
file of the complete book is available for download and printing.

Students launch online auction

From Distance Educator and e-School News.

At the end of each semester, Bentley College sophomore Shahzad Zia usually offers his used textbooks to the highest bidder on the most popular internet auction sites. This spring, he plans to list them for a more exclusive community–and save money in the process.

Zia plans to post his books on College Junktion, an online auction designed by college students, for college students, that opened for business Feb. 18.

Increasing visual literacy

A nice article at THE Journal.

The use of images is becoming more pervasive in modern culture, and schools must adapt their curricula and instructional practices accordingly. Visual literacy is becoming more important from a curricular standpoint as society relies to a greater degree on images and visual communication strategies. Thus, in order for students to be marketable in modern society, they must acquire visual literacy skills (Roblyer and Edwards 2000). Looking from an instructional standpoint, multimedia formats capture children's interest and are more easily understood, allowing the learner to focus on higher-level processes such as identifying problem-solving steps (Cooper 2003). One strategy to increase visual literacy is for teachers and students to use digital cameras, which are becoming cheaper, easier to use and more commonplace in K-12 schools. Many schools have effectively used classroom sets of laptop computers, but there are only a few successful models for using a set of digital cameras.

Are public colleges forgetting the public?

So says Stateline.org in this article.

A growing number of the nation's public colleges and universities are so worried about their financial bottom lines that they may be sacrificing their mission to educate students across the economic spectrum, a new report charges.

" Rather than focusing on providing a high-quality education to an ever-expanding share of the population, many academic leaders are chasing revenues, rankings and prestige,&lrquo; wrote Jamie Scurry, research associate at the Futures Project at Brown University.

University of Phoenix at the forefront

From the Spokane Journal of Business, a good story for the University of Phoenix.

Do you cave to public pressure and sell the coat for less, or even sever the relationship with the singer? Are there other options? It's your call.

Most colleges and universities today offer significant computerized resources to students, but because of the way the University of Phoenix provides instruction-sometimes completely online and often with limited classroom time-it invests heavily in educational technologies.

More on diploma mills

It seems everyone is reporting on diploma mills lately, and rightly. It's important that legitimate online degrees are not tagged with the 'diploma mill' baggage. Here's a story from the Capital Times out of Madison, Wisconsin on the subject.

There are funny stories, like the one about the state attorney who bought an MBA for his cat, and then there are the horror stories like tales of New York City cab drivers who moonlight as dentists.

Hamilton University is listed as a diploma mill by Oregon's Office of Degree Authorization, the leading authority on degree mills. After being exposed by a co-worker in 2003, Callahan resigned less than a year later.More commentary at LCCTeach weblog.

Apparently, several online universities & colleges are calling Cheyenne headquarters. These colleges and universities have been branded "diploma mills" — you pays yo' monies, and yo' gets dat fancy piece o' paper. These institutions all claim to be accreditted; however, the accreditting agency is not recognized by the educational community as a valid group. Laramie County Community College, the University of Wyoming, and the other six community colleges in the state are all accreditted by several groups, including the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School,which is nationally recognized.