By Public Affairs, UC Berkeley | July 24, 2012

By the Executive Committee for Online Education

Elements of higher education are moving online very quickly. More than 30% of all enrolled college students, some six million people, participated in online learning at accredited U.S. colleges and universities in 2011. At the same time, online higher education is still at an early stage of development, with enormous opportunities for experimentation and learning. Every student, faculty and staff member, administrator, and alumnus has an interest in how we approach this opportunity. This document proposes principles to guide Berkeleys strategy for online education that should assist units in designing online education offerings, clarify campus-level priorities, and accelerate Berkeleys growing reputation for leadership in this area.

Our approach to online education reflects five principles:

Our approach to enacting online programs will adhere to an approach that has served Berkeley well in all of our other initiatives. This is characterized by:

Categories: Campus news, Education Tags: administration, Chancellor Birgeneau, education

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Principles of UC Berkeley’s online education strategy

There is a great deal of enthusiasm -- usually outside of formal university settings -- for the potential of online post-secondary education. It is sometimes thought that online courses available for free or for very low tuition can allow anyone in the country or the world to gain a top-notch baccalaureate education, and the escalating costs of existing universities will be squashed. Colleges face the revolution that has already hit music and book publishers -- the Internet swamps traditional methods of transmission and publication, and whole new consumer experiences and business models are created. An engineer for a major computer company I talked to on a plane recently caught this mood exactly, when he said to me, "I'm sorry for you -- your industry is doomed. College education will soon be purchased through the iTunes store as an app."

This impression is perhaps supported by developments in the past year -- the extensive free course offerings available through iTunes University, the partnership created by several leading universities under the umbrella of Coursera, and Salman Khan's teaching videos at the Khan Academy. It is certainly true that there are rich, well-developed course materials available in these Internet neighborhoods and elsewhere.

So what is wrong with this picture? Is it possible to gain the education and the intellectual development associated with a traditional bricks-and-mortar university curriculum through a largely online course of study? Or are there large defects in the learning model associated with online instruction that mean that the quality of educational outcome is inevitably lower on average?

A couple of things seem fairly clear. First, people learn in many different ways. Abraham Lincoln had only a few months of formal schooling, but he spent several years of study in the Library of Congress as a Congressman from Illinois, and he read literature and history very intensively. So his understanding of politics, agriculture, religion, war, and economy all derived from self-directed study. The resources available on the Internet are stupendous, and there is no doubt that highly motivated, intelligent young people throughout the globe can learn an enormous amount through self-directed study using the resources now available. The Internet can be for a few of us what the Library of Congress was for Abraham Lincoln.

But this is a high standard for the student. It requires discipline, sustained commitment, and a plan of learning that most young people probably do not possess (and of course, most of us did not possess when we were 18 years old either). This is one of the key advantages of a university education. A college curriculum, guided by professors who stimulate and coach the student, makes it possible for a much wider range of young people to make this intellectual transition.

Second, simply having access to bodies of knowledge through a repository of books or web pages, whether it is a library or the full resources of the Internet, is not the same as an extended and developing educational experience. A young person needs to gain a handful of meta-level skills through his or her development following high school -- creativity, imagination, collaboration, analytical powers, ability to reason and communicate effectively -- and cultivating these skills in the young person is one of the most difficult assignments we give the college professor. The professor needs to design a classroom experience and a body of work materials that help to bring out these skills in the young person over time. This process is more similar to the process of coaching a ballet dancer than it is to drilling French grammar exercises and conjugations.

Moreover, there are very large differences in the learning process depending on the discipline and the nature of the content of the field. It may be that learning accounting principles is reasonably amenable to online education, because of the factual and problem-solving content of the discipline; whereas learning to analyze and discuss complex literature and philosophy is least amenable to online education, because of the need for substantial interaction and dialogue in developing the relevant skills.

One way of encapsulating my own hesitations about online education is by referring to the distinction between the absorption of content and the maturation of intellectual abilities. If the goal of a certain field of education is that the student should become familiar with a discrete body of facts and problems, perhaps online education is well suited to this field. If the goal is to develop the student's intellectual capabilities, however -- asking the right questions, formulating a hypothesis, pulling together the basis for a compelling argument or explanation -- then merely exposing the student to a list of materials and quizzing him or her on the content will not suffice.

None of these points is intended to show that online education is a false start. In fact, in my own teaching I'm inclined to favor a blended approach that uses the power of the Internet to expose students to a much broader range of materials that a traditional course syllabus can do, while at the same time maintaining the personal interaction and dialogue that stimulates the development of the students' own thinking skills. In fact, incorporating video lectures from iTunes University seems like a very fruitful way of deepening study of particular topics. But I think the evidence does not support the techno-optimism expressed by some that online packaged course systems can replace the professor-mediated learning experience of the traditional university classroom and laboratory.

(There is a good degree of overlap between these concerns and those expressed about current shifts in American expectations from higher education in Martha Nussbaum's recent book, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. I don't think that the outcomes that Nussbaum is looking for are likely to ensue from a largely online education.)

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Daniel Little: Is Online Education the Answer?

BOISE A new report takes aim at the nation's largest for-profit online education provider and finds students taking K12 Inc. classes in Idaho and four other states are falling more behind in math and reading than their traditional school counterparts.

The study was released Wednesday by the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. Along with lagging test scores, the report says the rate at which K12 students graduate on time is far lower than in regular schools.

The study "into K12 Inc. raises enormous red flags," said center director Kevin Welner.

The group has previously issued reports critical of online learning. A study released by the center in October said school-choice advocates are pushing states to rush headlong into virtual education despite limited data on these programs.

The latest report looked at schools managed by Virginia-based K12 in Idaho, Arizona, Arkansas, Ohio and Pennsylvania and found that on average, they had a consistently lower proportion of their students meeting or exceeding state standards in reading, according to 2010-2011 test scores.

The report also said math scores were lower compared to the state average. The on-time graduation rate for K12 students was about 49 percent for that year, compared to about 79 percent for the states, according to the study. In Idaho, where K12 provides curriculum for the state's largest online charter school, state officials say students beat slightly the statewide average for graduation rates in the most recent year.

K12 has managed online schools in 29 states with mixed academic success.

The company contends that the report is flawed and fails to show the academic progress of students over time. The report finds K12 students are falling further behind in math and reading than students in regular schools, but doesn't provide evidence to back up that claim, the company said.

"To make such conclusions, one would need to know the academic starting point of the students, in this case, test scores from a prior school year when they were enrolled in a brick-and-mortar school," the company said. "That test data is largely unavailable and is certainly not included in the NEPC report."

The report relies on "static, end-of-the-year test data," said the company, which also noted that K12-managed schools tend to enroll students who are behind academically.

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Idaho for-profit online students lag in math and reading skills

By Melissa Korn

Online education is touted as a convenient option for busy students, but e-learners may actually care more about cost than about schedule.

According to a new study by the education practice at The Parthenon Group, a consulting firm, tuition cost ranks higher among factors that prospective online students weigh than do convenience, quality of education or even the ability to find a job after graduation.

The survey included more than 1,500 prospective students with family income below $80,000 and was commissioned by Penn Foster, which operates online high school, college and vocational programs.

Tuition cost rose to the top spot in 2012 from the No. 5 criteria in school selection back in 2007. The main factor for students five years ago was education quality.

It was a little surprising to see [cost] jump to number one, says Chris Ross, a partner at Parthenon. The student decision-making process is shifting.

With price tags ballooning, jobs hard to come by, schools cutting back on grants and scholarships and families increasingly worried about saddling graduates with long-lasting debt, its no surprise that cost is top of mind.

And while the general public remains uncertain about online courses, as this Pew Research Center report from last summer shows, institutions of higher education are plowing head-first into e-courses. (On Tuesday, another 12 top universities announced they would pile onto the free education bandwagon.)

Still, as online education becomes more mainstream, schools are finding they need to differentiate themselves on something other than flexibility of schedule and convenience, Ross says. Accreditation no longer makes programs stand out from the crowd, nor does a schools non-profit or for-profit status. A separate Parthenon study, not yet published, found that up to one-third of students at private-sector (for-profit) schools had considered attending a non-profit institution as well. The decision set is widening, so other factors come into play, Ross says.

(This infographic from the Sloan Consortium, a group of schools, companies and other organizations involved in online learning, gives an overview of online education today. Of note: nearly one-third of total enrollment came from online courses in fall 2010, and nearly one-third of chief academic officers believe its at least somewhat inferior to face-to-face teaching.)

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Cost Tops Quality for Students Seeking Web Courses

LEAWOOD, Kan.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

ATI Nursing Education, the leading provider of online nurse education programs, today announced the award of its ATI Nursing Education Nurses Touch Product Grant to Des Moines Area Community Colleges practical nurse program and The University of North Carolina at Pembrokes registered nurse program.

The Nurses Touch product line, which will launch nationwide in fall 2012, is the industrys first online education program focusing exclusively on developing professional and interpersonal skills in nurses thus meeting a growing industry need. The product grant provides for the two nursing programs to use Nurses Touch for one class of students for one year.

The Des Moines Area Community College and University of North Carolina at Pembroke programs were selected from more than 120 grant applications. Using stringent criteria, ATI Nursing Education selected the schools based on how Nurses Touch will be used to enhance the educational experience and performance outcomes of nursing students.

Given the nursing roles of advocate, communicator, teacher, caregiver, and manager, the soft skills of nursing are increasingly important to the educational process, said Margaret Cooper, RN, MSN, Nurse Educator with the Des Moines Area Community College program. We are very excited to be able to offer our students access to the Nurses Touch product to strengthen those skills.

It is imperative that students understand that nursing entails more than the ability to perform pure technical skills, said Dena Evans, EdD, MPH, BSN, RN, CNE, associate professor and coordinator of the Learning Enhancement Center of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke program. Unfortunately, in many schools of nursing, a focus primarily on psychomotor skills leads to graduates who are unprepared for the critical and reflective thinking required in todays dynamic healthcare environment. We believe that upon graduation, these students who are exposed to the Nurses Touch content will be better prepared for a constantly evolving and demanding work environment.

Barbara Synowiez, PhD, MSN, RN, chair and professor of the Department of Nursing at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke agreed that the grant will provide a unique opportunity for the school to enhance the professional and interpersonal skills of its nursing graduates.

We are pleased to be a recipient of this grant and look forward to working with ATI Nursing Education during the next year, said Dr. Synowiez.

The Nurses Touch product line focuses on five key content areas including professional communication, wellness and self-care, becoming a professional nurse, nursing informatics and technology, and leadership and management all areas which will help foster interpersonal skills on the job. Like all ATI Nursing Education programs, Nurses Touch uses the latest and most effective learning tools such as interactive simulators, tutorials, case studies, and practice and proctored assessments.

Nurses Touch also allows educators to assess and track students progress. In addition to student growth, this reporting information can be an accreditation documentation resource.

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ATI Nursing Education Awards Grants that Provide Industry-first, Online Professional and Interpersonal Skills ...

SCRANTON, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Penn Foster, Inc., a global leader in online education, today announced findings from a recent research study conducted by The Parthenon Group on behalf of Penn Foster that looked at the market trends and drivers in the online education category. The report found that the cost of tuition was the most important factor in school selection, moving from the fifth most important factor in 2007 to the top factor in 2012. The study also revealed that potential students believe in the value of education, but doubt their likelihood to receive pay-back on their investment in the short-term.

Our research validated what we had been observing prospective students are more and more price sensitive, said Frank Britt, CEO of Penn Foster. The prospect of having student loans and building debt is a big challenge for students today which is why we continue to focus on debt-free, pay as you go programs that make education accessible to those with less financial means.

RECESSION

The recession of 2008 is still taking its toll on our nation and is a big reason why prospective students have not enrolled in a secondary education program. They have concerns about going into debt and the weight of carrying student loans. Key findings around the topic include:

CRITERIA FOR SELECTING A SCHOOL

The research tracked trends in education over the last five years. In 2007, participants were asked to select the most important criteria when choosing an online school, with the same study repeated in 2012. The findings show that students have become increasingly sensitive to price, taking the top spot in 2012, up from fifth in 2007. Convenience and interaction with teachers also were ranked higher in 2012 than in 2007.

The cost of tuition shot up as the biggest consideration when selecting a school, indicating that concerns over potentially accruing debt is top of mind for many students, said Chris Ross, a partner at The Parthenon Group and a member of the firms Education Practice.

COMPARISON SHOPPING

Penn Foster also set out to understand the number of schools potential students research during their decision making-process. The biggest key finding includes:

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Penn Foster School Releases Findings Around Student Attitudes Toward Education

Page Unified School District has recently made a move to bring students into the modern world of online education via a proposed partnership with Scottsdale Online Learning.

According to superintendent Jim Walker the addition of the online program would increase the number and variety of elective courses offered to students as well as providing the opportunity for missed credits in core areas to be made up.

The state has increased graduation requirements and some students are required to take additional courses in preparation of the AIMS test; this limits opportunities in a students schedule to take elective and CTE courses. Students can take online courses to create availability in their schedule for these electives, Walker said.

The online courses would include 14 different advanced placement courses, nine of which the district doesnt currently have the means to offer and will also have the option for students to enroll in dual-credit courses from Scottsdale Community College to help them be prepared for life after high school, said Page High principal Paul Gagnon.

This program extends to our students the opportunity to take courses we dont have the faculty to teach such as Latin, Mandarin Chinese, marine studies and psychology, added Gagnon.

Members of the districts site council spent several months researching three different online learning options for the district including Chandler and Mesa, but eventually decided on Scottsdale because of the rigorous level of instruction the program provides as well as the dedication to student support offered, said Gagnon.

Online learning is really taking of and we want to be sure that our students are able to take classes that involve the type of rigor receiving a PHS degree requires, said Gagnon.

To ensure that the program is effective, each course has a protocol to follow including online discussion session, conference calls and/or video chat that students are required to participate in and tests would have to be taken in person, in an environment overseen by a certified teacher, added Gagnon.

Hopefully this provides an option where students use our online program instead of many other providers serving the state. We believe that Scottsdale on-line had more accountability built into its product than many other options students are currently using, added Walker.

Gagnon went on to say that Scottsdale has been working closely with PUSD in training the staff involved, We will be prepared to meet the difficulty of these courses, the staffing is in place and adequate to facilitate what we have anticipated so far.

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School board mulls online classes

PHOENIX (CBS5) -

Gov. Jan Brewer launched an online education report card on Wednesday that is designed to monitor the state's progress in reaching its educational goals.

Brewer said the Arizona Ready Education Report Card will allow parents and teachers to access and monitor information about the quality of schools and student performance. She said the new online tool would help ensure children are "college- and career-ready after graduation."

The online report card, at ArizonaReady.com,tracks the state's progress in six major areas: pre-kindergarten, elementary education, junior high, high school, post-secondary education, and workforce.

The online report card is part of an education reform plan known as Arizona Ready, which was jointly developed by Brewer, the Arizona Department of Education and other education stakeholders in 2010.

The plan sets specific and measurable goals based on the recommendation of education and business leaders as well as the states Race to the Top grant application.

Before educational improvements could be made, the state needed to know where the schools and students stood, and have a way to track progress and present that information to parents and teachers, Brewer's office said.

Copyright 2012 CBS 5 (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.

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Brewer launches online education report card

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MlSs0gASvU

17-07-2012 01:56 The course "Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application" by Instructional Designer Fatimah Wirth of The Georgia Institute of Technology, will be offered free of charge to everyone on the Coursera platform. Sign up at

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Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application with Fatimah Wirth - Video

Online education platform Coursera wants to drag elite education into the 21st century. Yesterday, the academy jumped on board.

(Reuters)

As of yesterday, a year-old startup may well have become the most important experiment yet aimed at remaking higher education for the Internet age.

At the very least, it became the biggest.

A dozen major universities announcedthat they would begin providing content to Coursera, an innovative platform that makes interactive college classes available to the public free on the web. Next fall, it will offer at least 100 massive open online courses -- otherwise known as MOOCs*-- designed by professors from schools such as Princeton, CalTech, and Duke that will be capable of delivering lessons to more than 100,000 students at a time.

Founded by Stanford computer scientists Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, Coursera is one of a handful of efforts aimed at using the web's cost savings to bring Ivy League-quality courses to the masses. Its peers include the joint Harvard-MIT project edX and Udacity, a free online university created by Google executive and former Stanford professor Sebstian Thrun.

But the deals Coursera announced Tuesday may well prove to be an inflection point for online education, a sector that has traditionally been dominated by for-profit colleges known mostly for their noxious recruitment practices and poor results. That's because the new partnerships represent an embrace of web-based learning from across the top tier of U.S. universities. And where the elite colleges go, so goes the rest of academia.

Coursera has previously teamed with Stanford, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Michigan to offer 43 courses, which according to the New York Times enrolled 680,000 students. It now adds to its roster Duke, Caltech, University of Virginia, Georgia Tech, University of Washington, Rice, Johns Hopkins, University of California San Francisco, University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne, University of Toronto, University of Edinberg, and Switzerland's cole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne.

Only one school, University of Washington, said it will give credit for its Coursera classes. But two others, University of Pennsylvania and Caltech, said they would invest $3.7 million into the enterprise, bringing the company's venture funding to more than $22 million. Literally, colleges are buying in.

And the bigger the buy-in, the better. The fundamental challenge for U.S. universities as they struggle to contain their costs is figuring out how to teach more students using fewer resources. That's what MOOCs were born to do. In theory, these automated classes have the power to create the first truly radical efficiency gains in the history of higher education, a leap that would take us light years beyond our creaky current system that, as Coursera's Koller noted to me in an interview, is still bound up in traditions that date back to the Middle Ages.

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The Single Most Important Experiment in Higher Education