liberal arts online, march 9, 2012

What is online learning?

Type your answer in the chat room.

Liberal Arts Online

An ACS Blended Learning WebinarRebecca Frost Davis

March 9, 2012

The Faculty Projecthttp://facultyproject.com/

“Free Courses, Elite Colleges”, Inside Higher Ed

Tracking Trends in Higher Ed

• Calls for Efficiency• MOOCs: Massive Open Online Courses • DIYU—Anya Kamenetz• Open Educational Resources• Alternative credentials• Hybrid teaching • Flipped Classroom

What’s Missing?

Study of Online Learning

“most professors relied on text-based assignments and materials. In the instances when professors did decide to use interactive tools like online video, many of those technologies were not connected to learning objectives, the study found.”

---“Study Suggests Many Professors Use Interactive Tools Ineffectively

in Online Courses”

Are there approaches to online learning that fit liberal arts colleges?

How do we implement liberal education in an online environment?

Why go online?

• Pressures – New technologies & student expectations– Challenging finances– Business models under threat – Alternative credentialing models

Opportunities

• Connecting students back to campus• Free up curricular resources• Expand the curriculum– Sunoikisis: http://www.sunoikisis.org

• 5 Private Liberal-Arts Colleges Will Share a Professor

What do you do online?

(for teaching and learning)

Distance Education

“Distance education or distance learning, is a field of education that focuses on teaching methods and technology with the aim of delivering teaching, often on an individual basis, to students who are not physically present in a traditional educational setting such as a classroom.”

--Wikipedia definition for distance education

Looking for Whitman in . . .

• New York City College of Technology (CUNY)• New York University• University of Mary Washington in

Fredericksburg, VA• Rutgers University-Camden • University of Novi Sad (Serbia)

http://lookingforwhitman.org

• Personal student blogs• Aggregation via tags and news feeds

Frontispiece Project

Students choose frontispiece (inspired by the famous 1855 frontispiece from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass) along with a quote from “Song of Myself”

Annotation Project• Each campus

focuses on one set of writings connected to their place• Contributes to

larger project

Find out More

• http://bavatuesdays.com/looking-for-whitman-a-grand-aggregated-experiment/

• http://mkgold.net/blog/tag/lookingforwhitman/

• Matt Gold. “Looking for Whitman: A Multi-Campus Experiment in Digital Pedagogy.”Teaching Digital Humanities, ed. Brett D. Hirsch. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, Forthcoming.

Networked World

• John Seely Brown, NITLE Fellow 2011– Explosion of data – Exponential advances in computation storage and

bandwidth– Large-scale, deeply-connected problems

• Ken O’Donnell– Assoc. Dean, Office of the Chancellor, California

State University, Opening Forum, AAC&U– Produce systems thinkers that innovate– Teach ability to work in a team structure

Networked Learning

• Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age.” elearnspace, December 12, 2004.

• Cathy Davidson and David Goldberg, Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age– Participatory learning

• Distributed team• Active and collaborative learning

Place-based, Networked Learning

ACS courses built on this model?

Bryn Mawr College

• Blended learning: courses in which students both participate in face-to-face classes and work through computer-based, interactive tutorials and quizzes that provide customized learning and instant feedback

• Spiro, Lisa. Blended Learning and the Open Learning Initiative in a Liberal Arts Context: Bryn Mawr’s Next Generation Learning Challenge Grant. New Learning Resources, a NITLE Initiative, December 23, 2011.

Hybrid Learning

• Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative• Kolowich, Steve. “Hybrid Education 2.0.” Inside

Higher Ed, December 28, 2009. • Department of Education, Evaluation

of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning : A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies

Open Learning InitiativeChemistry Module

Open Learning Resources

• Kahn Academy: www.khanacademy.org/• Codeacademy.com

Blended Learning

Do you use or know of open learning resources?

Global Learning

• Re-envisioning Diasporas at Swarthmore College and Asheshi University in Ghana

SUNY-COIL

• SUNY Center for Online International Collaborative Learning (COIL)

• http://coilcenter.purchase.edu/ • Globally Networked Learning• Faculty Guide for COIL Course Development

Challenges

• Technology– “minding and living with the gap” – “No-Frustration policy”

• Logistics– Time differences– Cultural expectations

Globally Networked Learning

Examples or ideas for the ACS?

Designing the Liberal Arts Online

• University of Mary Washington Online Learning Initiative

• Steven Greenlaw, Acting Director, University Teaching Center, & Professor of Economics– Goals– Activities– Tools– Context

Define liberal arts values

What are they for you?

Online Course Design Process

1. Define liberal arts values2. Develop process to ensure values are

integrated3. Faculty development: thinking about

teaching and learning

NITLE Symposium

• April 16 - 17, in Arlington, Virginia• Sunoikisis• Bryn Mawr, Next Generation Learning

Challenges• Mary Washington, Liberal Arts Online• SUNY-COIL

New Terms for Online Learning

• Place-based, Networked Learning• Blended Learning (aka Hybrid Learning)• Open Educational Resources (OER)• Digital Humanities• Globally Networked Learning• Learning• Liberal Education