Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hUyCB_l-w0

04-09-2012 06:08 http Google Faculty Summit 2012 July 26, 2012 Mountain View, California Online Learning Presented by Peter Norvig, Google Director of Research Google Faculty Summit 2012 Online Learning google faculty summit, online learning, mooc, education

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Google Faculty Summit 2012: Online Learning - Video

LAS VEGAS (AP) When Hilary Nagel goes to "class" at College of Southern Nevada, she powers on her iPad and listens to a lecture in her pajamas from the comfort of her home.

Nagel, 28, is among the university students across the nation taking online classes. As cash-strapped colleges contend with budget cuts, higher-education leaders and politicians have looked toward online education as a potentially cheaper way to educate students.

In Nevada, which last year saw a 14 percent decline in state funding for higher education, online classes have proliferated as demand has grown.

The first college in Southern Nevada to offer online education was CSN, in 1996. The state's largest higher education institution started out with one computer server, 37 sections of online classes and 528 online students.

By last fall, CSN's "Online Campus" had grown to 18 servers and 962 online sections with more than 13,000 online students.

"We started very small, but grew quickly," Terry Norris, director of e-learning at CSN, told the Las Vegas Sun (http://bit.ly/QC8Cdg). "It was hard to keep up with the growth."

Online courses become viable options because students may be bound by time and geographical constraints, Norris said.

Virtual classrooms allow rural students in Tonopah and Nellis Air Force Base students serving overseas to complete their degrees at CSN. Las Vegas students like Nagel who work during the day can still go to college by logging online in the evenings and weekends.

UNLV junior Yisrael Vincent, who has attended CSN for two years, said he could no longer afford the hour-long commute to campus. That's one of the reasons why he began taking online classes, he said.

"(The commute) ends up being a higher opportunity cost than logging on at home," the accounting major said.

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Online classes proliferate in Nevada colleges

PALM SPRINGS, Calif., Sept. 5, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- World Education University (pronounced "we-you"), the first tuition-free, global, online higher education institution designed to provide comprehensive course offerings and full degrees to students, today announced the signing of its initial academic leadership team. Joining WEU, which has originated the term "Education Should Be Free" (ESBF), are 10 faculty representing the positions of University President, Deans of the Schools of Medicine and Health, Education, Psychology, Engineering, Law, and Arts, and Directors of Curriculum, Education Design and Standards and Compliance. WEU executives are still in the process of recruiting a Dean for the School of Business.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120905/CG68371LOGO)

"We are honored to be welcoming this top-caliber group of higher education professionals to the WEU staff," says Curtis Pickering, WEU Co-Founder and Chairman/CEO. "These individuals, established leaders and practitioners in both academia and private - sector worlds, share WEU's dedication to transforming higher education to reflect a more inclusive, equitable environment. Among our faculty are experts in the high needs areas of STEM, differentiated learning, business entrepreneurship, management, and educational leadership who are poised to help students achieve a solid academic education that also includes mastery of the 21st century skills employers say are crucial to success in today's workplace."

New faculty include:

Dr. James Waddell University President, Chief Academic Officer Dr. Jim Waddell holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Philosophical Theology from the University of Oxford, is a Foundation Fellow of Harris Manchester College, Oxford University, and Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturing, and Commerce. Dr. Waddell has taught at Princeton, been president of Menlo College in California, and as president of the Waddell Group, assisted colleges, universities, and corporations in launching, developing, and expanding programs in management, humanities, and education.

Dr. Sally Kilgore Dean of the School of Education Dr. Sally Kilgore is former Director of the Office of Research for the U.S. Department of Education, co-principal investigator of a National Science Foundation study of mathematics and science achievement, founder and former CEO of Modern Red School House, and author of the recent book From Silos to Systems. She has served on the faculties of several universities, including Emory University. Dr. Kilgore holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago and has an undergraduate degree from Baylor University.

Dr. Penny Orr Dean of the School of Psychology Dr. Penny Orr's extensive training and work in psychology, education, and creative fields has driven her to be a student-centered advocate and a creative innovator in developing programs that meet student needs while ensuring academic rigor. Dr. Orr is a registered and board certified Art Therapist, and Art Therapy Certified Supervisor and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Furman University, a Master of Arts in Art Therapy from The School of the Arts Institute of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from Purdue University.

Debra Rocha, J.D. Dean of the School of Law Dr. Debra Rocha has been on the faculty of several higher learning institutions, has instructed adult learners in undergraduate and graduate degree programs, authored over 400 online law related courses and developed 13 law related degree programs. Dr. Rocha holds a Juris Degree from American College Law with course work completed at Suffolk University College of Law in Boston, Massachusetts. She also holds a Master ofScience degreein Criminal Justice from Salve Regina University, a Bachelor of Science degree in Administration of Justice and a Paralegal Certificate from Roger Williams University. Dr. Rocha was also founding Dean of the California Southern University College of Law.

Dr. Vanessa Sheldon Dean of the School of Arts Dr. Vanessa Sheldon is an internationally-known practicing musician, on the faculty of several southern California colleges, a member of the National Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi and the Golden Key International Honour Society. Dr. Sheldon holds Bachelor's and Master's Degrees of Music in instrumental performance from California State University (CSU) Los Angeles and a Doctorate of Musical Arts in harp and musicology from the University of Arizona.

Dr. Philip Slocum Dean of the School of Medicine and Health Sciences Dr. Philip Slocum's academic career spans more than three decades in both private and public medical schools, as both a faculty member and administrator. Dr. Slocum holds a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree from the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine. His interest in the interface of the principles of higher education with the principles of medical education led him to complete the Harvard University's Graduate School of Education's Management and Leadership in Education and the Institute of Educational Management programs. He is a recognized national leader in medical education, and noted for his critical views of the current state of health professions education and medical education.

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World Education University Announces Academic Leadership Team

TORONTO, Sept. 4, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --The EvoLLLution, an online newspaper for and by those who know higher education best, today announced the results of a study conducted to shed light on the growing need for continuing education within today's workforce. The research paper, entitled Lifelong Education and Labor Market Needs, suggests that continuing education increases both employee income and corporate productivity.

A third party research firm surveyed employers across North America to get their viewpoints on continuing education and professional development. The results showed that 96% of employers said continuing education improves job performance and 87% said it has a positive impact on pay scale, with many citing a direct correlation, especially in the healthcare field.

The research also showed that education allows employees to manage the skills gap between entry-level and mid-level positions, thus facilitating advancement with 78% of employers factoring continuing education into promotions. Furthermore, companies that support employee education for advancement can mitigate turnover costs associated with outside hires, thereby saving money and increasing efficiency.

"Education gives corporations a way to improve their productivity and reduce costs, while also giving employees a way to increase their income and advance within the company," said Amrit Ahluwalia, Managing Editor of The EvoLLLution. "The question that remains is how to increase corporate and individual participation in professional development education."

In an effort to answer this question, The EvoLLLution has dedicated September to fully exploring corporate training and professional development in a month-long special feature, kicked off with the release of this research paper. The month will consist of articles by top education experts including Chris Proulx, Executive Director at eCornell, and Dan Pontefract, Senior Director of Learning and Collaboration at TELUS, and will investigate topics ranging from how higher education institutions need to change to better serve corporations to whether the corporate training market is an effective strategy to combat shrinking higher education budgets.

To read the full research paper or view the results in an inforgraphic, please visit: http://www.evolllution.com/research

About The EvoLLLution

A grassroots online newspaper exclusively for, and by, those who understand higher education best, The EvoLLLution is the only place where you can find detailed opinions, news and research about the impact of non-traditional programs on the higher education industry and society-at-large. The EvoLLLution was crafted in recognition of the fact that there are innovators at every level of everyinstitution. From the college dean, to the state system president to the professional student, individuals everywhere are retooling, reorganizing and rethinking their way into the 21st century. These are the people writing articles on The Evolllution and shaping the future of lifelong learning.

For more information, please visit http://www.evolllution.com

Contact: Rachel Kuper media@destinysolutions.com(416) 480-0500 x214

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New Research Shows Continuing Education Increases Employee Income and Corporate Efficiency

CORPUS CHRISTI, TX--(Marketwire -09/04/12)- Nixon University being one of the pioneers of online education has always shown its dedication towards bringing and delivering excellence into its online educational processes. To facilitate this purpose it has officially unveiled its alliance with the world's best universities to provide quality education and up to date curriculum to all the working individuals who aspire to achieve career growth.

Nixon University has launched its partnership program; it is the learning link program which will enable students of either university to choose a major or module of their choice that is not being currently offered in their university. Being an online university gives them an opportunity to exchange and share video lectures on special modules. The second part of the program consists of shared researches, where faculty members and students from partner universities will be involved in research projects, this will result in increased efficiency and innovation.

The Dean at Nixon University commented on this occasion and said, "Nixon University's alliance with the world's renowned online universities has allowed Nixon to change the dynamics of online education and widen the scope and opportunities for students, it will not only benefit and create more flexibility for the learners but also the faculty will be benefited through shared resources and shared expertise. We are looking forward to providing our students the competitive advantage in the industry that we have always aimed for."

Furthermore, by combining the lectures and expertise of other universities with Nixon University will result in mutual collaboration between online universities to further bring advancement and responsiveness in the research fields as well as the online education itself according to the changing trends.

About Nixon University:

Nixon University is an accredited online university that stands to make quality education accessible to each and every student of the world. Nixon University is completely accredited by a globally renowned accreditation body Q.O.E.C.B (Quality Online Education Certification Bureau), which is an independent and self governing accreditation body that provides the status of accreditation after evaluating the applicant on tough educational standards. To know complete details about the program offerings and admission criteria, log on to http://www.Nixonuniversity.com.

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Nixon University Forms Strategic Partnerships and Alliances With Universities Across the Globe

By Hugo Miller - 2012-09-04T13:39:50Z

Desire2Learn Inc., an online- education startup from Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM)s birthplace of Waterloo, Ontario, raised $80 million in venture funding, aiming to prove that the area is more than just a BlackBerry town.

New Enterprise Associates Inc., a venture firm with offices in Menlo Park, California, and Omers Ventures, the investing arm of the Ontario Municipal Employee Retirement System, led the financing, according to a statement today.

Desire2Learn plans to use the money to hire more staff and step up its marketing and research spending. The company already delivers online teaching tools to 700 customers and 8 million students, John Baker, Desire2Learns founder and chief executive officer, said in an interview.

The partners were working with are believers in helping to transform the educational experience in the U.S., he said.

Desire2Learn joins OpenText Corp. (OTEX) in providing a second act for Waterloo, which is suffering through thousands of job cuts at RIM. The BlackBerry maker has been paring its operations as sales plunge and its market share shrinks. CEO Thorsten Heins is counting on a new lineup of phones, due next year, to reverse the companys fortunes.

OpenText, a 20-year-old maker of business software, saw revenue grow 17 percent to $1.21 billion in its most recent fiscal year and employs more than 4,500 workers worldwide. Desire2Learn has about 560 employees, up from 350 at the beginning of this year. It plans to add at least 150 more by the end of the year, Baker said.

For NEA, which recently completed a $2.6 billion fund, the deal continues its focus on the online-education market. Desire2Learn works with elementary schools, colleges and adult- continuing education across the U.S., including New York.

Desire2Learn is already profitable, Baker said. The cash injection, its first round of funding, will allow the company to ramp up its expansion, he said.

We didnt raise the money because we needed it but because we wanted to accelerate our growth, Baker said. We were a profitable high-growth company prior, and were hoping to remain a profitable high-growth company going forward.

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Desire2Learn, Startup From RIM’s Hometown, Gets Funding

Infographic by Kath Xu and connor kirschbaumThe Tech

Major players in online education market

Comparing Khan Academy, Coursera, Udacity, & edX missions, offerings

STAFF REPORTER

September 4, 2012

With most new markets comes competition, as is the case with online education. Today, there are four major platforms that produce content specifically for online instruction: Coursera, Udacity, and edX, which provide university-level content, and Khan Academy, which largely targets K-12 education. While they all offer content designed specifically for web-based instruction, they differ slightly in missions, delivery, and focus.

Khan Academy is an educational nonprofit founded in September 2008 by Salman A. Khan 98. According to its website, its mission is to change education for the better by providing a free world-class education for anyone anywhere.

Khan conceived the idea after making a website to help tutor his niece in 2004, and two years later he would post the first public video. The website has since grown to contain over 3,300 videos, most of which were made by Khan himself. There are also over 400 million interactive problems, grouped loosely into 47 courses, ranging from addition to linear algebra and macroeconomics. Khan Academy receives over six million unique users each month, has around 380,000 YouTube subscribers, and has had 179 million video views so far. The organization is supported by donors such as Google Inc. and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Most of the videos, which tend to be around 1015 minutes long, are on YouTube, with the exception of the Computer Science section, which contains integrated coding.

The instruction is oriented toward the casual learner as a supplement to traditional classroom learning. The videos have practice problems with hints and solutions, and there are no exams like in edX or Udacity. Users can earn badges based on their time spent on the site and how many assignments they have completed. Students have individual profiles, which allows teachers, coaches, and the students themselves to view summarized performance and achievement data. There are also forums that foster collaboration between students.

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Major players in online education market

Desire2Learn, a Canadian online education startup that offers an increasingly popular cloud learning platform for higher education, K-12 and Fortune 1000 companies, just announced that it has raised a $80 million Series A round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and OMERS Ventures. The company, which is based in RIMs hometown of Waterloo, Ontario, says that it plans to use this investment to bolster its customer service and cloud infrastructure, support global growth and to accelerate the development of its platform.

Todays $80 million financing marks the first time the company has taken an outside investment and is actually the largest-ever VC investment in a Canadian software company.

For NEA, this is also one of the companys largest investments. The global venture capital firm just closed on its new $2.6 billion fund in July and todays investment was made out of this fund. According to NEA, $1 trillion is spent on K-12 and higher education globally and technology is starting to transform how education works. Desire2Learn, NEAs Jon Sakoda and Ravi Viswanathan write today, is at the forefront of this shift with its leading software-as-a-service (SaaS) learning platform.

Desire2Learns platform, which competes with incumbents like Blackboard, currently has about 700 clients and 8 million learners have used its tools. The company was founded all the way back in 1999.

Desire2Learns platform aims to cover virtually every angle of the online education experience. Here is a short list of what the companys services capabilities:

Founded in 1999, Desire2Learn Incorporated is a leader in providing innovative eLearning solutions to academic and other leading organizations around the world. Desire2Learns focus is on research and development and service and support for their clients, and their products lead the market in innovation and client satisfaction.

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Online Education Platform Desire2Learn Raises Massive $80M Round From NEA & OMERS Ventures

On the plus side, MOOCs are free, open to anyone and taught by professors at prestigious universities. On the downside, they have low completion rates, and critics questions the utility of students being graded by their peers. TIME is enrolling in several of these classes to see what all the fuss is about

Johannes Simon / Getty Images

Sebastian Thrun of Stanford University speaks during the Digital Life Design conference (DLD) at HVB Forum on January 23, 2012 in Munich, Germany.

MOOC may be a silly-sounding acronym, but this new breed of online classes is shaking up the higher education world in ways that could be good for cash-strapped students and terrible for cash-strapped colleges. Taking a class online might not sound revolutionaryafter all, in the fall of 2010, 6.1 million students were enrolled inat least one online course. But those classes were pretty similar to the bricks-and-mortar kind, in that students paid fees to enroll in classes taught and graded by a professor and some teaching assistants. But MOOCs, short for massive open online courses, are a different animal. They can be taken by hundreds of thousands of students at the same time. And perhaps the most striking thing about MOOCs, many of which are being taught by professors at prestigious universities, is that theyre free.

Since MOOCs first made waves in the fall of 2011, when then-Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun opened his graduate-level artificial intelligence course up to any student anywhere and 160,000 students in more than 190 countries signed up, the free online classes have been heralded as revolutionary, the future, the single most important experimentthat will democratize higher educationand end the era of overpriced colleges. Thrun has even gone so far as to say he envisions a future in which there will only need to be 10 universities in the world. In January, he launched Udacity, a private educational organization, offering a dozen courses that anyone can sign up for and complete at his or her own pace; it now says it has more than 739,000 students. A similar company, created by two Stanford computer science professors, called Coursera, launched in April with four major university partnersStanford, the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton. Since then, Coursera, which features humanities as well as science courses, has added more big-name partners, including Duke, the University of Washington and the University of Virginia, and saysit has one million registered students. The third major player in this space, edX, was launched by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University in May. It has a more limited, high-level course catalog, but announcedin July that the University of California-Berkeley was joining.

There is a lot of excitement and fear and overblown rhetoric surrounding MOOCs. While some say free, online courses are a great way to increase minority enrollment, others have saidthey will leave many students behind. Some critics have saidthat MOOCs promote an unrealistic one-size-fits-all model of higher education and that there is no replacementfor true dialogue between a professor and his or her students. In a column for The New York Times in May, David Brooks said research has shown online education is only half as effective as in-person learning. A brain is not a computer, he wrote. We are not blank hard drives waiting to be filled with data. People learn from people they love and remember the things that arouse emotion. Some critics worry that onlinestudents will miss out on the social aspects of college.

Despite all the hype and the marquis players involved, the first few MOOCs have not been without issue. Of the thousands of students who have signed up for the classes, only about 10% complete them, and some professors have expressedconcern that its nearly impossible to grade a students work if you have no way to verify if the student is in fact the person completing the work. Indeed, in the first few courses taught over the summer at Coursera, dozens of studentsin at least three classes complained that their work was copied by students. (Coursera added an honor code in response to the reports ofplagiarism.) And even in this social-media savvy era, plenty of people are wondering how much students will learn in some MOOCs when it is their peers rather than their professors who are doing the grading.

To see what all the fuss is about, a handful of TIME editors and writers are signing up for MOOCs and will be blogging about the experience in order to give readers a sense of what its like to take a free, massive online course. Editor at Large Harry McCracken, a self-described gadget nerd who writes about consumer technology for the magazine and TIME.com, is enrolling in Courseras Gamification courseto learn how digital game elements and design techniques apply to non-game business and social problems. Brad Tuttle, who covers personal finance, travel and parenting for TIME.com, will be taking Courseras Introduction to Mathematical Thinking. Writer-Reporter Nate Rawlings has already started CourserasIntro to Sustainabilitycourse (and scored 100% on his first quiz). And photo editor Alexander Ho will learn the basics of computer programming in Udacitys Intro to Computer Science course.

As for me, Ill be taking Courseras Securing Digital Democracy coursea timely class given the upcoming electionthat will cover the risks and potential of electronic and Internet voting. This isnt my first encounter with online education, although my previous experience was of the traditional variety. As part of my bachelors degree at the University of Washington, I took a web-based environmental science course. I took the class because I needed a science credit, and rumor had it the class was a breeze. The rumor was true: I didnt watch a single lecture, but passed the class with an above-average grade by completing a group project and pulling an all-nighter before the final exam (which, by the way, was the only time I bothered to download the professors PowerPoint slides). Needless to say, Im hoping with a little added investment on my part, my latest foray into online education will be much different from my first one. Then again, my Coursera class started yesterday, so I already have some catching up to do.

Kayla Webley is a Staff Writer atTIME. Find her on Twitter at@kaylawebley, onFacebookor onGoogle+. You can also continue the discussion onTIMEs Facebookpageand on Twitter at@TIME.

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Will Open Online Courses Renew Higher Education?

According to GetEducated.com, the online masters degree in special education offered by Texas Tech has recently been ranked No. 11 in the country as a best buy.

Robin Lock, a professor in special education at Tech, said GetEducated.com looks at online programs in many different areas.

She said the website ranks programs based off two criteria, affordability and credibility.

Credibility is where we really like to hang our hat because that is whats most important to us, Lock said.

Although the online program is affordable, she said she does not want the recognition of affordability to detract from the quality of the program.

We want it to be affordable, she said. We want it to be accessible, but we really want to produce quality educators who go out and actually make a difference in their classroom tomorrow.

Scott Ridley, dean of the College of Education, said the website does not get paid by the schools it ranks.

Lock said the special education masters program offers many different areas of specialization.

The areas of specialization are split in two different branches, she said. There is a sensory impairment and low incidence branch, and there is a generic special education branch.

Within the special education branch, Lock said they prepare students for many different career paths.

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Website ranks Texas Tech’s online special education master’s degree program No. 11