Distant learning: a soldier studies online from Iraq

It's distant learning for Sgt. Jesus Ortega, but he somehow manages to fit his education in all the way from Iraq. Thanks to online courses, Ortega can do his distant learning from anywhere in the world, including a war zone. From the Lompoc Record.

For most people, traveling to a foreign country as a member of the U.S. military would be enough – missing friends and family, concentrating on chores, dodging danger. But Staff Sgt. Jesus Ortega wanted more on his plate.

While serving a five-month stint in Iraq this spring, Ortega continued taking classes for his associate's degree in fire technology from Allan Hancock College.

Distance learning at Trump University?

Distance learning just got a bit more wierd. Donald Trump, 'The Donald,' has just launched his own online "self-directed" distance learning courses. Here's the story from BusinessWeek.

With business schools around the country using Donald Trump's reality TV vehicle The Apprentice as a teaching tool, perhaps it was just a matter of time before The Donald cut out the middleman. On May 23, the real estate mogul formally launched Trump University — a foray into the fast-growing field of online education. Courses are expected to begin as early as Thursday, May 25.

Trump U. won't be offering degrees, or even classes in the traditional sense. Instead, the plan is to provide short, focused lessons in specific subjects that emphasize practice over theory. The first three courses available to students, at the price of $300 apiece, are introductions to real estate, marketing, and entrepreneurship.

Jones International University students from 8 countries, 30 states celebrate commencement

From PR Newswire, this bit of information on one of our sponsored universities here.

Jones International University, which received the first accreditation in the United States of a completely virtual institution, has 2004-2005 graduates representing eight countries and more than 30 states across the U.S., living proof that it has taken the distance out of distance education. The participants in today's online commencement — which included an address by the Librarian of Congress, Dr. James Billington — shared observations about their tenure at JIU.

Several graduates with highly mobile careers cited the anywhere/anytime nature of JIU's online format as the key to completing their studies. "I moved in the middle of my MBA from Houston to Kuwait and was able to complete my MBA with no issue; all I needed was an Internet connection," said Zouhir Omar Baki, recipient of an MBA in Negotiation and Conflict Management.

Online Programs tops in North Carolina

Online programs keep getting good news, as this story from Daily Business News shows for one distance education program in North Carolina.

The online Master of Arts degree in Liberal Studies has been named the state's top university-level distance learning initiative for 2004-05 by an association devoted to online education.

" This program clearly provides educational opportunities to individuals who would not have had access to traditional face-to-face classes, and it has a curriculum that is extremely innovative and diverse,&lrquo; said Kenneth M. Elliott, chair of the NCDLA awards committee. " It has the potential to be the best example of the use of distance education both in North Carolina and in the nation.&lrquo;

For more information on online programs, please visit some of the links on this site. You can order free prospectus from all the sponsored universities here at Online Universities.

Distancelearning for real estate agents

Distancelearning for real estate Agents has just become easier according to this story from RISMedia. The course provider for this type of distancelearning is RealtyUOnline, offering nationwide access for agents to update their knowledge, get certification, or virtually anything else needed in the field. And it's all done remotely, through distancelearning.

RealtyUOnline, first launched in 2004, has become the only portal of its kind in the industry.

The RealtyU portal now provides access to over 1,900 course offerings in real estate exam prep, pre and post licensing, continuing education (CE), designations, home inspection, skill based training, as well as introductory and continuing education courses in appraisal.

Online courses and critical thinking

Online courses take just as much critical thinking skill as do traditional courses, sometimes more. In this study from the International Journal of Instructional Technology & Distance Learning the authors look at how students use their critical thinking skills in online courses and is full of helpful information for any student.

Research indicates that critically reflective learning provides students with an opportunity to evaluate concepts learned and apply them to their experiences, contemplating its affect on future learning. This process occurs in a learning community where student interaction and feedback fuels the learning process leading to a higher level of critical reflective thinking for the learner. The challenge for online instructors is how to incorporate critical thinking in the online environment in an effective manner.

This paper addresses the issue of critical thinking and how it is applied in an actual online environment through an interactive exercise created by the instructor. The exercise not only fuels student learning but also creates a learning community in which students interact and share ideas. The BUS105 Create-A-Problem exercise described in this paper incorporates critical thinking in the online environment to meet the goals of developing reflective critical thinking in students and to nurture and online learning community that can be used as a model for other online instructors.Via Distance Educator, an extremely useful site for deciding which online courses would be best for you.

Education pump primed by Gates

Education just got a little richers. bill gates has opened his pockets to a tune of 2.3 billion dollars in an effort to prime the education pump for high-school and post-high school students. Here's a story at the Boston Globe on Gates education largesee.

Bill Gates raised some hackles with his withering assessment of American high schools, but at least the billionaire founder of Microsoft is putting his money where his mouth is. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested $2.3 billion since 2000 in new visions of education, with smaller schools and more personalized instruction to prepare young people for the working world and post-high school learning.

At one of its schools, the Truman Center in Federal Way, about 20 miles south of Seattle, 12 teacher/advisers tend 208 students — helping them figure out what they care about and how to pursue it. Two days a week are set aside for job-shadowing and internships in the real world.

Other's following the story at Teaching and Developing Online and This Week In Education.

Get game

Gaming degrees on the rise, according to CNET …

Students at a growing number of colleges and universities have the opportunity to study video-game development, even as supporters of studies differ on whether the value of such programs lies in practical or theoretical application. At some campuses, such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison, students in gaming programs use video games as a foundation for understanding sociology, anthropology, economics, or pedagogy. Kurt Squire, who teaches at Wisconsin, said, "Our school is not in position a of turning out people for industry." Programs at schools such as the University of Denver, on the other hand, focus their efforts on preparing students to work as video-game developers. Officials at that university credit the program with reversing the
declining number of applicants to the computer science department. Scott Leutenegger, head of the university's undergraduate gaming program, said that like academic film programs in the 1930s and 1940s, gaming programs were initially met with skepticism but have begun to earn wider respect. Still, he said, gaming programs are not for everyone. "This is an industry with high burnout rates, long hours, and incredibly tight deadlines," said Leutenegger.

Motivation in the digital classroom

A story from the Palm Beach Post about a woman finding the right education for her. It's never too late.

Barland, 59, a former executive, a mother and grandmother, is a distance-learning student at Lynn. She takes tests in pajamas late at night while her husband Barry sleeps. She goes to the Lynn library – via cyberspace – and uses it as a portal to international publications. She talks with students from Europe and the Caribbean on Internet discussion boards.

Thirty-eight years go by in a hurry. Barland was a nursing student in 1963 when she met her future husband on a blind date. She dropped out of school, they married and raised a family.

University goes after bloggers

This from Inside Higher Ed…

Officials at St. Lawrence University are trying to obtain the names of individuals responsible for a blog that includes content the university finds inappropriate. Included in the blog, whose stated goal is to fight a "right-wing assault" on the university, are pictures of and harshly derogatory comments about students and faculty whom the blog's contributors see as conservative. Other blog posts criticize university policies and administrators, but Macreena Doyle, a spokesperson for St. Lawrence, said the institution is most concerned about the anonymous attacks on students. "If these were posters attacking students on
campus," said Doyle, "we would take action." The university has filed "John Doe" court actions with Time Warner Cable, whose service was used to make postings to the blog, demanding information that would identify the blog's contributors. Google disclosed IP addresses from which blog postings came after being ordered to do so by the courts, but it is not clear whether Time Warner will do the same.