The first volume of the DEHub Monograph Series No 1 Issues in distance and flexible learning was released today and the other volumes in the series will progressively be published over the next few weeks. The aim of the monograph series is to promote the publication of research in the fields of distance and online learning and facilitate researchers and practitioners from many disciplines across the higher education sector, nationally and internationally, sharing their data, techniques, research methods, findings and ideas. This Monograph Series endeavours to be a professional* publication that educational practitioners and researchers can use as a vehicle to extend and share knowledge, improve dissemination of research and practice, and stimulate discussion in the field of distance and online learning and other related areas. The first volume was written by Marcus Bowles and is titled “Realising the full socio-economic promise of the National Broadband Network in preparing all regions of Australia for participation in the Digital Economy”
Keep your eye out for the second monograph series over the coming months.
[*To ensure a professional approach, all submissions undergo double blind peer review.]
The DEHub: Innovation in Distance Education would like to advise that the call inviting contributions for the Summer 2012/13 edition, of the DEQuarterlyhas been extended to November 30 2012. The DEHub would also like to advise that this will be the final edition of the DEQuarterly series.
The theme for this issue is “What’s driving information and communication technologies in education?”
If you are interested in providing a short paper (1,000 to 1,500 words) plus a 50 word biography and photo, please send your proposal for consideration to fgray@une.edu.au. Each paper submitted will be reviewed by DEHub researchers. All submissions must be received by November 30 2012.
If you wish to contact the DEHub, or you have any questions concerning this edition, please email Dr Frances Gray at fgray@une.edu.au. To view previous editions of the DEQuarterly, please visit the DEQuarterly page of the DEHub site.
There are many new articles up on our Online and Distance Education news feed this week, including articles on MOOCs, politics and universities, and technology and higher education.
The DEHub Database of Research on Distance Education is a searchable web database which contains details of books, articles, conference papers and reports on various aspects of distance and online education.
176 new records have been added to the database, so please visit http://goo.gl/mjV4Y to discover the new research material.
This edition’s theme “Open Educational Resources – Insights and Issues“, has the DEQuarterly showcasing articles that explore the controversial question of Open Educational Resources (OER). We hope you will find the articles in this edition interesting and enjoyable.
The DEHub is now in preparation for Edition No 13, which will be the final in the DEQuarterly series, with a working theme of “What’s driving information and communication technologies in education“.
If you are interested in providing a short paper (1,000 to 1,500 words) on this topic, plus a 50-word biography and photo, please send your proposal for consideration to fgray@une.edu.au. Each proposal submitted will be reviewed by DEHub researchers. All submissions must be received by 16 November 2012. If you would like to discuss this further, please contact fgray@une.edu.au.
The DEHub thanks you for your continued interest and participation in all our activities.
You are invited to take partin a conversation to consider whether the global OER community could design and build a world map of OER institutional initiatives.
Further to the vision of increasing the world’s access to open educational resources being realised, the need for a map that would provide a comprehensive overview of OER projects in the world has been identified.
A map would provide the big picture of the global OER movement, and help communicate the story of OER. Working together, the OER community could design and build the map, and regularly update it. With time, energy and collaboration, the map could become a door to the OER world, helping to communicate with stakeholders and connect with each other.
If you are interested in being a part of this discussion, you can take part in the international conversations being held between November 12 and 30, as follows:
Many many new articles up on our Online and Distance Education news feed this week.
There are articles on MOOCs, reforms in the education sector, government cuts, the Ernst and Young report, the MyUniversity website, and the NBN rollout, just to name a few.
2012 is a significant year for Open Educational Resources (OER). Celebrating the recent adoption of the 2012 Paris OER Declaration at the UNESCO World congress, the OER Foundation in collaboration with the COL & UNESCO-COL Chairs in OER and Creative Commons New Zealand will host another free online workshop on OERs and open licensing.
OPEN CONTENT LICENSING FOR EDUCATORS is a free online workshop designed for educators and students who want to learn more about open education resources, copyright, and creative commons licenses.
Open Access Week, a global event now entering its sixth year, is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research.
From22-28 October, the University of New England Library is joining many other institutions all over the world to mark Open Access Week 2012.
UNE will participate in OA Week locally by offering a series of information sessions and workshops to contribute to this year’s theme of Set the default to open access.
Most sessions will be offered twice during the week and will be held in the FJH Letters Room, Ground Floor, Dixson Library.
The sessions are as follows:
Getting it out there
Prof Mark Perry, School of Law
Monday 22 October 11am – 12 noon
Wednesday 24 October 12 noon – 1pm
Copyright and publishers’ agreements
Ydeet Winter-Irving, Director, Legal Office &
Berenice Scott, Copyright Officer, University Library
Monday 22 October 2.00pm – 3.00pm
Wednesday 24 October 10.00am – 11.00am
Those attending this session are encouraged to bring along publishers’ agreements for discussion.
Creative Commons licensing
Berenice Scott, Copyright Officer, University Library
Tuesday 23 October 11.00am – 11.30am
Thursday 25 October 10.00am – 10.30am
Open Access and e-publications@UNE
Simon McMillan, Digital Infrastructure & Information Technologies Manager, University Library
Wednesday 24 October 2.00pm – 2.30pm
Friday 26 October 10am – 10.30am
Open Access and Academic Publishing
Leonie Sherwin, Faculty Librarian The Professions, University Library
Thursday 25 October 11.00am – 12noon
Leonie Sherwin, Faculty Librarian for the Professions and Berenice Scott will contribute to a session on Open Access and Creative Commons for HDR students on 23 October in the Postgraduate Research Conference organised by the Faculty of the Professions.
More information on Open Access is available on the Library site.
Don’t forget to check out our new Online & Distance Education blog, which is updated each week with new articles from Australian and International news services. To see the blog, click here.
Remember, you can subscribe to this service by clicking on the Online and Distance Education News RSS Feed link on the right of the screen.
The DEHub: Innovation in Distance Education is inviting contributions for our Summer 2012/13 edition, Number 12 in the DEQuarterly series. The theme for this issue is “What’s driving information and communication technologies in education?”
If you are interested in providing a short paper (1,000 to 1,500 words) plus a 50 word biography and photo, please send your proposal for consideration to fgray@une.edu.au. Each paper submitted will be reviewed by DEHub researchers. All submissions must be received by November 2 2012.
If you wish to contact the DEHub, or you have any questions concerning this edition, please email Dr Frances Gray at fgray@une.edu.au.
To view previous editions of the DEQuarterly, please visit the DEQuarterly page of the DEHub site.
Sue Gregory, from the DEHub team and the School of Education in the Faculty of the Professions at the University of New England has received an Office for Learning and Teaching Award (OLT) Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning.
Sue’s citation is:
For the innovative adaptation and expansion of virtual world technology to enhance learning and teaching in education and across disciplines.
The description is as follows:
Sue Gregory’s innovative methods in teaching through the implementation of virtual worlds have led to significant engagement, immersion and collaboration of students. These students have outperformed others in their learning. Sue has collaborated with many academics on her journey both within UNE, nationally and internationally. She began the Australian and New Zealand Virtual Worlds Working Group in 2009, now with over 190 members. This research and collaboration have informed Sue’s teaching.
The Office for Learning and Teaching promotes and supports change in higher education institutions for the enhancement of learning and teaching. The Office for Learning and Teaching is part of the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education.
This citation is a wonderful recognition for UNE and Sue Gregory’s contributions to the ‘cutting edge’ use of technology in teacher education.
TheDEHub: Innovation in Distance Educationwould like to remind you that the call for contributions for our Spring 2012 edition of the DEQuarterly, ‘Open Educational Resources: Insights and Issues’ was extended to September 30 2012.
If you are interested in providing a short paper (1,000 to 1,500 words) plus a 50 word biography and photo, please send your proposal for consideration to fgray@une.edu.au. Each paper submitted will be reviewed by DEHub researchers.
If you wish to contact the DEHub, or you have any questions concerning this edition, please email Dr Frances Gray at fgray@une.edu.au.
To view previous editions of the DEQuarterly, please visit the DEQuarterly page of the DEHub site.
TheDEHub: Innovation in Distance Educationwould like to advise that the call for contributions for our Spring 2012 edition of the DEQuarterly, has been extended to September 30 2012.
The theme for this issue is ‘Open Educational Resources: Insights and Issues’
If you are interested in providing a short paper (1,000 to 1,500 words) plus a 50 word biography and photo, please send your proposal for consideration to fgray@une.edu.au. Each paper submitted will be reviewed by DEHub researchers.
If you wish to contact the DEHub, or you have any questions concerning this edition, please email Dr Frances Gray at fgray@une.edu.au.
To view previous editions of the DEQuarterly, please visit the DEQuarterly page of the DEHub site.
You can subscribe to this service by clicking on the Online and Distance Education News RSS Feed link on the right of that screen.
Our researchers will be scouring newspapers from Australia and around the globe for informative articles on online and distance education, and the blog will be updated with new content by 5pm each Thursday.
We hope that you will enjoy this exciting and informative new service from the DEHub.
The DEHub Database of Research on Distance Education is a searchable web database which contains details of books, articles, conference papers and reports on various aspects of distance and online education.
The DEHub’s Database of Research on Distance Education is currently being reviewed by ACER’s Cunningham Library and the DEHub. The Cunningham Library have devised a survey that we would appreciate you completing to help us direct future development of the database.
As an incentive to assist us with the review, ACER’s Cunningham Library are offering a $100 book voucher to be spent at the ACER Online Bookshop for one lucky survey participant. If you wish to be eligible for the draw, please complete your name and email at the end of the survey.
Click here to complete the Survey or scroll to the bottom of the DEHub Welcome page and click on the link to the DEHub Database, and follow the prompts.
We thank you for taking the time to complete this survey.
ODLAA (Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia) is a professional association for those involved in open and distance learning.
“Distance Education” is the journal published by ODLAA, and they have just published an edition on OERs (Open Educational Resources) and Social Inclusion. This edition has been edited by Grainne Conole, of the University of Leicester.
The journal includes articles and reflections on the use of OERs, and the ways in which they can support social inclusion, including articles authored by our own DEHub academic, Dr. Carina Bossu.
ODLAA has published this latest edition with free access. Click here to read the journal.
The DEHub Database of Research on Distance Education is a searchable web database which contains details of books, articles, conference papers and reports on various aspects of distance and online education.
115 new records have been added to the database, so please visit http://bit.ly/nNxmAu to discover the new research material.
The DEHub: Innovation in Distance Education is inviting contributions for our Spring 2012 edition, Number 12 in the DEQuarterly series. The theme for this issue is ‘Open Educational Resources: Insights and Issues’
If you are interested in providing a short paper (1,000 to 1,500 words) plus a 50 word biography and photo, please send your proposal for consideration to fgray@une.edu.au. Each paper submitted will be reviewed by DEHub researchers. All submissions must be received by September 14 2012.
If you wish to contact the DEHub, or you have any questions concerning this edition, please email Dr Frances Gray at fgray@une.edu.au.
To view previous editions of the DEQuarterly, please visit the DEQuarterly page of the DEHub site.
Primary Research Group has published the 2012-13 Edition of The Survey of Distance Learning Programs in Higher Education, ISBN 157440-204-8.
The 165 page study is based on highly detailed interviews with higher education distance learning programs, predominantly in the USA but also in Canada and the UK.
The report paints a detailed statistical profile of trends in distance learning, covering, but not restricted to: revenue and enrollment growth, evolution of cost structure, trends in salaries, use of tutoring, delivery mediums, developments in faculty training and certification, grants and financial aid to students, student loans, assessment and retention practices, marketing budgets with details on spending and plans for spending on billboards, television, newspapers, radio, direct mail, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and many other venues.
Data is broken out by size and type of institution and size of distance learning program, among other variables.
Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:
Enrollment in distance learning programs has increased by approximately 5.8% in the last year
80% of survey participants in junior and community colleges and 90% of those in MA/PHD granting colleges believe enrollment in distance learning programs at their college has grown to some extent
Revenue growth is increasingly cannibalistic and comes from reduced enrollment in traditional classes rather than new student enrollment.
The mean increase in tuition prices in the 2011-12 school year for the US colleges in the sample was 4.18%.
While 18.18% of colleges have at least one full-time staff person devoted to assessing the online distance learning program.
21.15% of colleges in the sample have a marketing budget for their distance learning program that is administratively separate from their overall university marketing budget.
MA/PHD granting colleges spent a mean of $7,250 on newspaper and magazine ads to support distance learning enrollment in the past year.
17.65% of the community colleges in the sample have advertised their distance learning programs over the radio in the past year.
30.77% of the colleges in the sample plan to hold their advertising spending on Google constant over the next year.
24% of the colleges sampled have improved their retention rate in the past year.
A pdf version of the report is available from Primary Research Group Inc. for $165.00; the print version will be available at the same price on July 7, 2012. For a table of contents, sample excerpt, and list of participants, or to place an order, go to www.PrimaryResearch.com.
The DEHUb would like to invite you to participate in the Open Educational Resources (OER) National Symposium, which is part of the Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) funded research project titled “Adoption, use and management of Open Educational Resources (OERs) to enhance teaching and learning in Australia”.
As there are limited places still available for the event, please register your interest by contacting Sue Watson at swatso30@une.edu.au by no later than 17th August 2012, to guarantee your place.
Please note that there are a small number of rooms on hold specifically for this Symposium until 17th August at the Sebel Surry Hills. To secure a room, you can contact the Sebel directly on 02 9289 000 (accommodation bookings are at your own expense).
If you have any further questions related to this project or the Symposium, please do not hesitate to contact Carina Bossu at cbossu3@une.edu.au.
Below please find the invitation complete with information about the Symposium. We hope you will consider being involved, and we look forward to meeting you.
College Open Textbooks and SoftChalk present an informative six-hour overview of Open Educational Resources using four prerecorded Webinars which will be alternating with live discussion.
Barriers to Adoption of Online Learning Systems in U.S. Higher Education
Published May 01, 2012
Lawrence S. Bacow, William G. Bowen, Kevin M. Guthrie, Kelly A. Lack & Matthew P. Long
This Ithaka S+R report is a landscape review of important developments in online learning today. It is the first in a series that will provide leaders in higher education with lessons learned from existing online learning efforts to help accelerate productive use of these systems in the future. The goal of this research was to understand what benefits colleges and universities expect from online learning technologies, what barriers they face in implementing them, and how these technologies might be best shaped to serve different types of institutions.
Even though there are many “online courses” in existence today, the environment for systems that support interactive learning online (ILO)—those that are full-featured and used by teaching institutions to assist in the effective delivery of credit-bearing courses—is at a very early stage of development. Ithaka S+R worked with leaders, administrators, faculty members, and other key stakeholders to investigate the potential for the use of these delivery systems.
Two important findings came out of this work:
The need for open, shared data on student learning and performance that are created through ILO;
The need for investment in the creation of sustainable and customizable platforms for delivering interactive online learning instruction.
To read more, or to download the report, click here.
Primary Research Group has published the 2012-13 Edition of The Survey of Distance Learning Programs in Higher Education.
The 165 page study is based on highly detailed interviews with higher education distance learning programs, predominantly in the USA but also in Canada and the UK.
The report paints a detailed statistical profile of trends in distance learning, covering, but not restricted to: revenue and enrollment growth, evolution of cost structure, trends in salaries, use of tutoring, delivery mediums, developments in faculty training and certification, grants and financial aid to students, student loans, assessment and retention practices, marketing budgets with details on spending and plans for spending on billboards, television, newspapers, radio, direct mail, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and many other venues.
Data is broken out by size and type of institution and size of distance learning program, among other variables.
Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:
Enrollment in distance learning programs has increased by approximately 5.8% in the last year
80% of survey participants in junior and community colleges and 90% of those in MA/PHD granting colleges believe enrollment in distance learning programs at their college has grown to some extent
Revenue growth is increasingly cannibalistic and comes from reduced enrollment in traditional classes rather than new student enrollment.
The mean increase in tuition prices in the 2011-12 school year for the US colleges in the sample was 4.18%.
While 18.18% of colleges have at least one full-time staff person devoted to assessing the online distance learning program.
21.15% of colleges in the sample have a marketing budget for their distance learning program that is administratively separate from their overall university marketing budget.
MA/PHD granting colleges spent a mean of $7,250 on newspaper and magazine ads to support distance learning enrollment in the past year.
17.65% of the community colleges in the sample have advertised their distance learning programs over the radio in the past year.
30.77% of the colleges in the sample plan to hold their advertising spending on Google constant over the next year.
24% of the colleges sampled have improved their retention rate in the past year.
A pdf version of the report is available from Primary Research Group Inc. for $165.00; the print version will be available at the same price on July 7, 2012. For a table of contents, sample excerpt, and list of participants, or to place an order, go to their website at www.PrimaryResearch.com.
The DEHub Database of Research on Distance Education is a searchable web database which contains details of books, articles, conference papers and reports on various aspects of distance and online education.
Please visit http://bit.ly/nNxmAu to discover the 110 new records that have recently been added to the database.
An international project led from the University of New England has reviewed laws, regulations and policies governing distance education in 24 diverse nations throughout the South-west Pacific / South-east Asia region.
The project has resulted in an online resource that collates existing policies and regulations relating to distance education in those 24 nations, and a report that provides an overview of distance education in the region.
“Individual institutions should be able use this online resource to inform work in their own contexts – especially in regard to policy development,” said the project leader, UNE’s Dr Rosalind James. “We’re hoping that it will remain a dynamic, ‘living’ databank that others will build upon in the future.”
Dr James is the Director of DEHub, the international research network based at UNE that conducted the project for the International Council for Open and Distance Education. She led a project team comprising Professor Belinda Tynan (the former DEHub Director, now at the University of Southern Queensland), Dr Len Webster (from the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency), Richard Lewis in the UK (from the International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education) and, in New Zealand, Dr Stephen Marshall and Associate Professor Gordon Suddaby (from the Australasian Council on Open, Distance and ELearning).
“Distance education is a priority area of cooperation among many of the countries in the South-west Pacific / South-east Asia region,” Dr James said. “However, despite the long history of distance education in this region, with most countries offering distance education in some form, especially at higher levels of education, legislation specific to distance education was uncovered in only two countries: Vietnam and Vanuatu.
“All the countries have some legislation and policy regulating education (and, therefore, distance education), but most institutions have limited public strategies or specific policy frameworks underpinning their distance education programs.”
“This pilot project had difficultly assessing whether regulatory frameworks in the region facilitate or constrain the development of distance and online education,” Dr James said, “since legislative considerations have largely been eclipsed by other more pressing local concerns such as resourcing, funding, government mechanisms, level of wealth, and ICT infrastructure and capability.
“We concluded that, given the political, cultural and socio-economic diversity of the 24 countries profiled, it’s unlikely that one defined ‘best practice’ or overarching policy would meet the needs of governments and policy-makers across the region.”
The EDUCAUSE Annual Conference, November 6–9 in Denver and online, is the one higher education IT event you can’t afford to miss. Experienced CIOs and community IT leaders will share their expertise and insights into the future. You’ll discover solutions and ideas to address campus needs.Interactivity is core, whether you participate on-site or online. Experience a robust, member-driven program built on focused community domains and themes.
At EDUCAUSE 2012 you’ll:
Benefit from thought leadership perspectives
Network with peers
Hear community insights
Focus on hot topics and new ideas
Explore state-of-the-art technologies and solutions
This edition’s theme “Working Online: Issues Trends and Outcomes for Distance Educators“, has the DEQuarterly showcasing articles that explore working online in the distance education and mixed mode environments. Three (3) of the articles explore aspects of online learning design, while the other four (4) articles explore broader issues of who distance education teachers are; the demands placed on these teachers; management and systems in a global context; and the cost of eteaching in the Australian higher education system.
The DEHub is now in preparation for Edition No 11, with a working theme of “What is evidenced based research in digitised education?“. If you are interested in providing a short paper (1,000 to 1,500 words) on this topic, plus a 50-word biography and photo, please send your proposal for consideration to dehubpm@une.edu.au.Each proposal submitted will be reviewed by DEHub researchers. Submissions have been extended and will now close on Friday June 15 2012.
The DEHub looks forward to your continued interest and participation in all our activities.
Clayton R Wright has compiled a listing of Educational Technology and Education Conferences occurring between June and December 2012.
The list contains 1,129 events that focus on the use of technology in educational settings and on teaching, learning, and educational administration.
To review this list, please click here or go to the RESOURCES menu and select Conference Listings, and you’ll be able to review this list as well as previous ones.
The 2012 World Congress on OERs <http://www.unesco.org/oercongress> will be held at UNESCO HQ in Paris, France from 20 – 22 June 2012.
This Open Educational Resource (OER) Congress is being organized by UNESCO in full partnership with the Commonwealth of Learning with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (USA).
The aims of the Congress are to:
Release the 2012 Paris Declaration;
Showcase the world’s best practices in OER policies, initiatives, and experts;
Celebrate the 10th anniversary of the 2002 UNESCO Forum that coined the term OER.
The Congress aims to encourage more governments to adopt policies that include OER and will bring together Ministers of Education/Human Resource Development, senior policy makers, expert practitioners, researchers and relevant stakeholders.
It is a 2-part event with an official negotiation component by UNESCO Member States and selected invited organizations and individuals negotiating the text of the 2012 Paris Declaration, and an open exhibition of OER practices and workshops and seminars.
Live web-streaming of the World OER Congress will start from 09:00 on Wednesday 20 June and stop on Friday 22 June.
Also at the 2012 World OER Congress, a parallel Open Seminar & Exhibition (OSE) will be held to provide an opportunity to civil society organizations, academia, and individual experts to present their OER initiatives. More than 70 experts from all over the world will be presenting high-impact OER initiatives.
The OSE will be live-streamed and a digital moderator has been engaged, who will accept questions to pose to the presenters via Twitter and Identica, using #oercongress.
The OSE will run from 10am – 6pm CET GMT+2 from Thurs 21 – Fri 22 June. Registration to the Open Seminar and Exhibition is available at www.unesco.org/oercongress.
2012 is a significant year for open education and OER
We are celebrating 10 years since UNESCO coined the term Open Educational Resources.
In joining the global celebrations for this 10th anniversary, the OER Foundation is hosting a free online training workshop on OERs, Copyright and Creative Commons licensing.
Game Changers:Education and Information Technologies
Rethinking the Rules
How can we reach more learners, more effectively, and with greater impact?
Education changes lives and societies, but can we sustain the current model? New models and new technologies allow us to rethink many of the premises of education – location and time, credit and credentials, knowledge creation and sharing.
Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies is a collection of chapters and case studies contributed by college and university presidents, provosts, faculty, and other stakeholders. Institutions are finding new ways of achieving higher education’s mission without being crippled by constraints or overpowered by greater expectations.
Find out who is changing the game and what we can learn from their different approaches in Game Changers, a new EDUCAUSE e-book edited by Diana G Oblinger.
Click here to go to the link to download the entire e-book, or individual chapters or case studies.
The DEHub Database of Research on Distance Education is a searchable web database which contains details of books, articles, conference papers and reports on various aspects of distance and online education.
Please visit http://bit.ly/nNxmAu to discover the 137 new records that have recently been added to the database.
The Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (AJET) has announced the publication of a special issue on Virtual Worlds in Tertiary Education: An Australian Perspective.
This special issue publication has been guest edited by Mark J. W. Lee (Adjunct for the DEHub, Charles Sturt University and University of New England), Barney Delgano (Charles Sturt University), and Helen Farley (University of Southern Queensland).
The guest editorial and the eight articles that constitute the special issue are freely available from the AJET website at http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet
In response to continual increases in the volume of manuscript submissions it receives, the MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT at http://jolt.merlot.org/) is seeking expressions of interest from qualified individuals to join its panel of reviewers.
JOLT is a peer-reviewed, open-access, online journal whose objectives are to:
- Enable faculty to use technology effectively in online teaching and learning by learning from a community of researchers and scholars;
- Enable academic programs to design and deploy academic technology to optimize online teaching and learning;
- Build a community around the research and scholarly use of multimedia educational resources for online teaching and learning.
JOLT welcomes papers on all aspects of online learning and teaching in higher education. Topics may include, but are not limited to: learning theory and the use of multimedia to improve online learning; instructional design theory and application; online learning and teaching initiatives; use of technology in online education; innovative online learning and teaching practices.
All manuscripts submitted to JOLT are subjected to a prima facie evaluation by the Editor or Associate Editor before they are sent out for peer review. Those that pass this preliminary assessment are assigned to a minimum of two reviewers on the journal’s reviewer panel, who are typically each given three weeks to submit their feedback. Every effort is made by the editors to match manuscripts to reviewers based on their areas of interest and expertise. The editors are responsible collating the reviewers’ feedback and rendering a final decision on the manuscript in light of the feedback. (Additional reviews may be obtained if necessary, for example, in cases where the reviews received contain conflicting recommendations.) Generally, JOLT strives to advise authors on the disposition of their manuscripts within six to eight weeks of the date of submission.
Individuals interested in serving as reviewers for JOLT are asked to complete the form at the following URL:
Prospective reviewers should possess a higher research degree (e.g., Ph.D.) and/or have a strong publication record in online education, learning technology, or higher education teaching and learning. Previous experience performing reviews for scholarly journals is preferred but not essential. Although remuneration is not offered to reviewers, at any given time those who have completed at least one review in the past year will be acknowledged by having their names listed on the JOLT website.
Any questions relating to JOLT should be directed to the editors, whose contact details appear below:
Mark J. W. Lee (Charles Sturt University and University of New England, Australia)
JOLT Editor
Email: jolteditor@merlot.org
Keith D. Sisson (University of Memphis, USA)
JOLT Associate Editor
Email: ksisson@memphis.edu
The DEHub: Innovation in Distance Education is inviting contributions for our Winter 2012 edition, Number 11 of the DEQuarterly series. This will be a special themed publication – What is evidence based research in digitised education?
If you are interested in providing a short paper (1,000 to 1,500 words) plus a 50 word biography and photo, please send your proposal for consideration to dehubpm@une.edu.au. Each paper submitted will be reviewed by DEHub researchers. All submissions must be received by May 16 2012.
If you wish to contact the DEHub, or you have any questions concerning this edition, please email Alan Wylie at dehubpm@une.edu.au.
To view previous editions of the DEQuarterly, please visit the Newsletter page of the DEHub site.
The DEHub Database of Research on Distance Education has 146 new records that have recently been added. Please visit http://bit.ly/nNxmAu to discover these and more.
The DEHub database of Research is a searchable web database which contains details of books, articles, conference papers and reports on various aspects of distance and online education.
Leading Today’s People for Tomorrow’s Enterprise IT
If you are responsible for leading enterprise/administrative information technology at your institution, this is the conference for you.
Intentionally designed and sized for Interactive discussion, the Enterprise IT Leadership Conference, May 16–18, 2012, at the JW Marriott Indianapolis, is a unique opportunity to bring your campus enterprise-wide challenges to the table for discussion, feedback, and collaborative problem solving with leading college and university CIOs and senior IT leaders.
Bring your strategies, your ideas, your challenges, your solutions (whether successful or not), and your questions to sessions that address leadership, IT service and systems management, institutional strategic planning and technology, governance and data-driven decisions, and corporate and campus solutions.
Registration is open. Browse the program to see what innovative and practical ideas are being presented, and what hot topics will be discussed. Be inspired to see the bigger picture and return to campus with a new perspective.
Who Should Attend?
This thought-leadership conference is designed for college and university CIOs and senior leaders of enterprise IT and administrative systems. If you are in one of the following roles on a college or university campus, this is your conference.
CIO or senior IT leader
Enterprise system leader
IT manager aspiring to a leadership role
About the Program
Resonating throughout this event, the conference program themes are designed to uncover the challenges you’re facing at your institution. Themes include:
Leadership
IT Service and Systems Management
Institutional Strategic Planning and Technology
Governance and Data-Driven Decisions
Track sessions will include speed networking, a CIO/senior IT discussion on hot topics, and campus solutions sessions. In addition to track sessions, you’ll experience the following general sessions:
Register before April 16 to get discounted early-bird registration rates.
Additional Event Opportunities
The General Session and morning concurrent sessions on Thursday, May 17, will be combined with the Security Professionals Conference to encourage IT leaders to network and convene on enterprise security issues.
Program Committee
View the list of the 2012 Enterprise IT Leadership Conference Program Committee members.
The DEHub Database of Research on Distance Education is a searchable web database which contains details of books, articles, conference papers and reports on various aspects of distance and online education.
Please visit http://bit.ly/nNxmAu to discover the 200 new records that have recently been added to the database.
DEQuarterly Spring 2011/Summer 2012 edition – The 9th edition of the DEQuarterly is now available at http://dehub.edu.au/?page_id=35
This edition presents an update on the DEHub funded partner institutions research projects that were introduced in the 2011 Summer edition of the DEQuarterly, including:
University of Central Queensland – Learning interactions: A cross-institutional, multi-disciplinary analysis of learner and teacher interactions within online contexts
Charles Sturt University – Managing institutional change through distributed professional learning strategies: Tertiary teachers engagement with blended and flexible learning
Massey University – In their own words: Exploring the experiences, challenges and successes of new distance learners
University of Southern Queensland – Professional Learning: Using iPods to support professional practice and the creation of a community of practice for nursing and education students
University of New England – Contextualising virtual interaction opportunities in the health sciences: pharmacist and social work client counseling
The five articles in edition No 9 outline the progress of these projects to date.
The Open Courseware Consortium is coordinating Open Education Week 2012, 5 -10 March 2012. This is a global event celebrating achievements and reporting on progress of the open education movement.
A number of OER university thought leaders will open the University of Leicester series of webinars for Open Education Week. Register your seat today: http://goo.gl/ITeyy
Further Information
On 6th and 7th March 2012, the University of Leicester will be running a series of three webinars entitled “Enabling universal access to higher education via openness and collaboration” to celebrate Open Education Week.
Confirmed speakers include Jim Taylor (University of Southern Queensland), Grainne Conole (University of Leicester), George Siemens (Athabasca University), Martin Weller and Patrick McAndrew (Open University UK), Sandra Wills (Wollongong University), Vasi Doncheva (Northtec Polytechnic) and Anthony Camilleri (EFQUEL and OERtest). The series is jointly hosted by the TOUCANS and ELKS projects at the Beyond Distance Research Alliance, in partnership with the Open University’s SCORE Programme and the Higher Education Funding Council for England.
The DEHub: Innovation in Distance Education is inviting contributions for the Autumn edition, Number 11 of the DEQuarterly. This will be a special themed publication – Working Online: Issues, Trends and Outcomes for Distance Educators.
If you are interested in providing a short paper (up to 1,000 words) plus a 50 word biography and photo, please send your proposal for consideration to dehubpm@une.edu.au. Each paper submitted will be reviewed by DEHub researchers.
If you wish to contact me, or have any questions concerning this edition, please email Alan Wylie at dehubpm@une.edu.au.
To view previous editions of the DEQuarterly, please visit the Newsletter page.
The OER Foundation is running a free online workshop on OERs, Copyright, and Creative Commons Licenses starting Monday January 23 2012.
Open content licensing for educators is a free online workshop designed for educators and students who want to learn more about open education resources, copyright, and creative commons licenses.
The course materials were developed as a collaborative project by volunteers from the OER Foundation, WikiEducator, the OpenCourseWare Consortium and Creative Commons with funding support from UNESCO. The course will provide prerequisite knowledge required by educators to legally remix open education materials and help institutions to take informed decisions about open content licenses.
This free workshop is sponsored by Ako Aotearoa, a strategic partner member of the OER Foundation and scheduled for 23 – 27 January 2012.
Participants will need approximately 1 hour for each day of the workshop at a time which suits your own schedule.
The course will be hosted using the OER Foundation’s Moodle website.
If you are familiar with Moodle, you can go directly and register for the course (Create an account and click on the “Enrol me in this course” link on the left-hand side of your screen.)
Share the gift of knowledge and invite your friends and colleagues to join us for this inaugural workshop. We aim to break a world record for hosting the largest free workshop on open content licensing. Send them a link to this url: http://wikieducator.org/Open_content_licensing_for_educators/About
In the field of information technology, the completion of projects on time and within budget is not only expected, but vital for continuing success and improvement in higher education.
EDUCAUSE has worked with Project Management Institute (PMI®) to offer members access to new professional development resources on project management. As a global thought leader and knowledge resource, PMI is the world’s largest project management member association, representing more than 600,000 practitioners in over 185 countries.
EDUCAUSE members can now access the following PMI resources:
Articles on topics relevant to IT project management
EDUCAUSE member rate on PMI’s online course, Applying the Fundamentals of Project Management, offered in English, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese
Strategic project management in IT and other areas on your campus can help your institution work smarter and faster, with a better understanding of how organizations succeed, learn, and change.
Amongst the preparation for Christmas and maybe during the restful period of the end-of-year we hope you will find a bit of time to think over the EDEN Porto 2012 Annual Conference themes and proposals. The deadline of the submission is 10 February 2012.
Invitation
In times of great challenges for Europe, all generations are called to act together, thus also to learn, to produce, share and preserve knowledge. The 2012 European Year of Active Ageing and the Solidarity Between Generations serves as framework for raising awareness, generating innovative approaches and disseminating good practice.
The EDEN Annual Conference will approach the key questions of learning methodology and technology focusing on the “Open learning generations”, the contexts of socially significant target groups: junior and senior e-learners. We will explore their learning cultures, technology use patterns and discuss new approaches in pedagogy and andragogy that respond to them.
Open learning for and amongst diverse generations
Innovative pedagogical models have been significant in empowering learners and their communities as co-producers in networked lifelong learning. Helping to spread educational resources as digitised content which accommodate different learning pathways, widening participation and promoting shared learning experiences between generations contributes to closing the technology gap.
Online and Social
The 2012 Annual Conference will be supported and accompanied intensively by social networking, sharing, online and virtual presence and involvement possibilities.
This will be strengthened by and implemented through the EDEN Members Portal: the NAP area on the web and its services.
Call for Contributions
We invite all interested professionals to take part and discover the conference themes by submitting their experience.
There will be opportunities for submitting and presenting papers, workshops, posters and demonstrations. At the Porto conference, virtual presentations, as a new form will be introduced. The conference allows openness in choosing the topics and in applying interactive formats and ways of presentations.
To learn more about the scope of the event and consult the themes, please visit the respective conference pages.
László Andor, Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion – invited
Nuno Crato, Minister of Education, Portugal
David White, Honorary Director General, European Commission, DG EAC
Bob Fryer, Chair of Board, Campaign for Learning, UK
Dale J. Stephens, Educational futurist, 2011 Thiel Fellow “20 Under 20”, US
Ingeborg Bo, former EDEN president, Ingeborg Bo Consult, Norway
Schedule and Deadlines
Paper Submissions – 10 February, 2012
Registration Open – Mid February
Notification of Authors – 31 March
Conference Venue, Porto
The second largest city in Portugal is Porto, or Oporto, considered as the economic and cultural heart of the entire region. Porto, is a city with soul, populated with a supportive community, an unhurried pace of life. The city’s historic center was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1996, and it was also the European cultural capital in 2001.
The Conference will be hosted at the Alfândega do Porto Congress Center, in downtown Porto, by the Douro River. This historical building was the former customs house which after recovering by Portuguese contemporary architects is now an outstanding facility.
The students from the sites in Sydney and in Armidale met up online in a broadband virtual school environment, which was made possible by the use of the national broadband network.
The students were shown tutorial videos, following which, they were given access to the virtual world, where they were able to create their own avatars, learn to fly and teleport, and to utilise inventory items to construct objects. Students were also taken on a guided tour of the virtual world project, WHEN2050, and were then broken into groups of 5, and challenged to create a collaborative design within their virtual world, which would be something meaningful within their local community. Each group was given a mentor from Dulwich Hill High, and were encouraged to be as creative as possible. After spending time designing, the students developed their ideas, with recreational centres, shopping malls, churches, carparks and playgrounds being created. If you click here, you can see some of the works in progress on the day.
For further information please read this article, by the 3dedrats team.
Stellar transcripts aside, students now have to worry about an increasing number of colleges peering at their social-networking pages online—and potentially denying their applications because of what they find there.
The number of college-admissions officials using Facebook and other social-networking sites to learn more about applicants quadrupled over the past year, according to New York City-based Kaplan Test Prep, the test preparation division of Kaplan Inc.
In the company’s 2011 survey of admissions officers from the top 500 colleges and universities, 24 percent said they have viewed publicly available pages to get a clearer picture of an applicant, while 20 percent turned to Google. Twelve percent reported that their discoveries, including photos showing underage drinking, vulgarities in blogs, and plagiarism in essays, negatively affected the chance of admission.
Educators, mostly at the high school level, use assemblies, classroom discussions, and guidance sessions to warn students about such consequences. But even educators who say they continuously hammer home the golden rule—in essence, that students should never post anything online they wouldn’t want their parents to see—are finding it hard to get through to a generation weaned on social media.
“The disconnect happens because of their age and level of maturity,” said Franklin N. Caesar, the principal of the 1,875-student Central Islip Senior High School in Central Islip, N.Y. “We’re constantly dealing with students who are inappropriate in what they say online.”
Two years ago, he started meeting with principals at lower-level schools to talk about the daily altercations he was dealing with because of comments posted on Facebook and other social-networking sites. They have met regularly since, and this year began an education program for 5th graders to address the potential ramifications of their online behavior—including a rejected college application.
“By bombarding them with information at that age,” said Mr. Caesar, “and then again in the sixth grade, seventh grade, and eighth grade, we’re hoping that by the time they get to high school, they’ll understand and it will make a difference. It’s too late if they get here and they haven’t been hearing that message.”
In the meantime, guidance counselors at Central Islip convey that message in a senior assembly at the beginning of the year and during an annual technology fair.
Eric Sheninger, the principal of the 680-student New Milford High School in New Milford, N.J., recalled having students in a Digital Journalism class Google themselves to become more familiar with their digital footprints. The students, in grades 9-12, were surprised at the “page after page of content” that came up. One girl was astonished when she found a picture of herself she’d never seen before; she couldn’t even remember where or when it was taken.
Next, Mr. Sheninger took a poll: Seventy-five percent of the students had accepted a “friend” request on Facebook from someone they’d never met. He had them consider the fact that if they post an inappropriate picture, anyone can easily take a screen shot of that image and post it anywhere online without permission.
“Then I told them, ‘Let’s say a college pulls up that image. They’re going to think twice about accepting you.’ You use an example like that to rev it up a notch,” he said.
Mr. Sheninger added that he repeated that point in two recent assemblies: “You can get a good feel of whether students are engaged. Every one of them was quiet and their eyes were forward. You could tell they were thinking, ‘Wow, we’ve never really thought about this.’ ”
Formalize Instruction?
That’s exactly why Fredrick McDowell, the headmaster of the 1,150-student Brighton High School, which is part of the Boston public schools, believes schools need a greater effort across the board to formalize instruction on making positive social-media choices—and on the growing number of repercussions that can result from poor ones.
“You’d be hard-pressed to find schools that have an official curriculum they’re using about this,” he said. “And I think that, as educators, we start too late with these conversations.”
At Brighton, behavior on social-networking sites that has spilled over into school has been directly linked to suspensions, assaults, and criminal records. In an attempt to fix the problem, the school has intensified efforts to teach juniors and seniors about appropriate Web use, with involvement from classroom teachers, guidance counselors, administrators at grade-level assemblies, and guest speakers from local law-enforcement agencies.
It’s even harder for middle school students to make a connection between their current social-media behavior and future college plans. In fact, they often separate their actions from consequences in general. Students regularly post comments online that they would never say in person, and as they try to deal with new social pressures, they tend to forget that the virtual worlds they create are far from private.
As a result, sometimes the character portrayed online bears little resemblance to a student’s true character, a situation that routinely continues into the high school years when it’s college-application time, said Carolyn Walker, the vice principal of curriculum and instruction at Natomas Middle School in Sacramento, Calif. The school serves 950 students in grades 7 and 8.
“Everybody wants to fit the norm, to be cool,” Ms. Walker said. “These kids are digital natives, and social media is a way for them to get their voices out there and be heard.
“We just have to keep talking more and more with them about how they can do that in a way that gives an image of themselves that’s real,” she said, “as opposed to what they think people want to see and hear. We don’t have a proper avenue right now to communicate that, though. We could be doing more.”
Murky Legal Issues
Kaplan’s annual survey also pointed out that most higher education institutions do not have official guidelines governing how social-networking pages should factor into the admission equation. Social-media experts predict the ethical and legal implications will likely remain uncertain until there is clear legal ground on the subject.
At some colleges, admissions officers track an applicant’s digital footprint only after receiving an anonymous tip—likely from a competing applicant or parent, according to some college-admissions experts.
“We recommend that there be a policy in place on the use of information that bubbles up through these very public sites, but the one thing a policy doesn’t always cover is what happens when the information is just laid on the table,” said David Hawkins, the director of public policy and research for the National Association for College Admission Counseling, based in Arlington, Va. “Colleges can’t just ignore something that has been brought to their attention.”
North Carolina State University has denied applications based in part on information gleaned from publicly available sites. Administrators conduct online searches only after red flags are raised during the application process.
“Before we bring new people into our campus community, we want to make sure they’re going to be a good fit for us,” said Thomas Griffin, the school’s director of undergraduate admissions.
The rejections are due largely to safety concerns and are handed down only after “a thorough, thoughtful evaluation of the situation,” added Mr. Griffin.
Though North Carolina State is not yet doing random online searches of its more than 25,000 undergraduate applicants, that step is something officials are talking about.
And with the student-recruiting firm TargetX integrating Facebook and Twitter into the technology program it designed specifically for admissions offices, those searches are getting even easier. The Conshohocken, Pa.-based firm has made it so that with one click on a social-network icon, admissions officers can instantly link to an applicant’s profile, allowing institutions to see “the most complete and authentic picture” of their prospects, said Chief Executive Officer Brian Niles. (On one random search while providing a remote demonstration of the technology, Mr. Niles quickly came across “sexy time” as one student’s entry under “activities.”)
Information Alerts
Enterpreneur Geoffrey Arone, seeing a business opportunity in social-networking searches, co-founded a Web-based Internet-monitoring service for parents that lets them stay informed about the status updates, photos, videos, and other personal information their children are sharing online. SafetyWeb, which Mr. Arone helped devise after seeing the searches firsthand while conducting college-admission interviews for his alma maters, Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, automatically sends alerts when personal information is posted that could put a child’s privacy, safety, and online reputation at risk.
Some students acknowledge that they post questionable statements online despite warnings at school.
Nick Cicchinelli, a junior at the 2,800-student Lakota West High School in West Chester, Ohio, said that he tries for the most part to keep his Facebook comments “PG” because his parents are in his network, but that he occasionally writes things he shouldn’t.
“Sometimes I just don’t think about it,” he said.
So while educators can provide the advice, they can’t make students heed it.
“Kids are all different,” said Freida Trujillo, a high school resource counselor for the 90,000-student Albuquerque district in New Mexico. “Some are going to take the message to heart and try to be diligent, and others are going to do what they normally do. It’s going to depend on the student.”
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Robin L. Flanigan is a freelance writer based in Rochester, N.Y.
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Special coverage on the alignment between K-12 schools and postsecondary education is supported in part by a grant from the Lumina Foundation for Education, at www.luminafoundation.org.
14-16 August 2012, The Institute of Education, University of London, London, UK
This year’s special theme: New Media, Multi-Modality, and Learning
The International Conference on Learning is for any person with an interest in, and concern for, education at any of its levels – from early childhood, to schools, to higher education – and lifelong learning in any of its sites, from home to school to university to the workplace.
The Conference will address a range of critically important themes relating to education today. Plenary speakers will include some of the world’s leading thinkers in the field of education.
We encourage all presenters to submit written papers to The International Journal of Learning, a fully refereed academic Journal. Virtual participants may also submit papers for consideration by the Journal. All registered Conference participants will receive a complimentary online subscription to the Journal. This subscription is valid until one year after the Conference end date.
If you would like to know more about this Conference, bookmark the Learning Conference site and return for further information – the site is regularly updated. You may also wish to subscribe to the Conference and Journal Newsletter.
The Learning Conference is held annually in different locations around the world, each selected for the particular role education is playing in social, cultural and economic change. In recent years, the Conference has been held with Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia in 1999; RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia in 2000; the University of Athens, Spetses, Greece in 2001; Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China in 2002; Institute of Education, London University, London, UK in 2003; Institute of Pedagogical Sciences, Havana, Cuba in 2004; University of Granada, Granada, Spain in 2005; Sam Sharpe Teachers College, Montego Bay, Jamaica in 2006; University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa in 2007; the University of Illinois, Chicago, USA in 2008; the University of Barcelona, Spain in 2009; the Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong in 2010; and University of Mauritius, Mauritius 2011.
The International Journal of Learning
Conference participants may submit papers to the Learning Journal, before the Conference and up until one month after the Conference. Papers submitted for publication will be fully refereed. The publication decision is based on the referees’ reports.
For those unable to attend the Conference in person, a virtual registration will provide participants access to the electronic version of the Journal, as well as the option to submit papers for refereeing and possible publication.
For more information about the Journal please visit the Publish Your Paper page.
Enterprise IT Leadership Conference seeks experienced professionals as presenters.
Experienced, higher education professionals who lead enterprise/administrative organizations are encouraged to submit a proposal to speak at the Enterprise IT Leadership Conference. This event, May 16–18 in Indianapolis, is a unique opportunity to bring your campus enterprise-wide challenges to the table for discussion, feedback, and collaborative problem solving with leading college and university CIOs and senior IT leaders.
Your personal experience is needed to help shape the conference program. Together we’ll focus on solutions to the major challenges related to enterprise IT on campus, strategies for collaborating with C-level institutional and interinstitutional peers, financial enterprise IT challenges, and strategic decision making.
Please share your stories and expertise by submitting a proposal to speak at this event by December 16.
Program Insights
The conference program committee members have outlined a series of themes and “big questions”they believe will create a timely, exciting, and valuable program. The 2012 conference themes are:
Governance and Data-Driven Decisions
Leadership
Institutional Strategic Planning and Technology
IT Service and Systems Management
The general session and morning concurrent sessions on Thursday, May 17, will be combined with the Security Professionals Conference to encourage IT leaders to network and collaborate on enterprise security issues.
Additional Proposal Resources
The resources below have been created to assist you in creating your proposal and to answer your questions regarding the proposal submission process:
Take an active role in the Enterprise IT Leadership Conference—designed exculsively for college and university CIOs and senior leaders of enterprise IT and information systems.
University-based teacher education remains the engine of teacher preparation in the United States. Long criticized, it has come under increasing scrutiny in recent months—from outside reviewers, from the U.S. Department of Education, and even from accreditation bodies—all of whom are pushing for changes. This webinar will introduce participants to the approaches taken by two teacher education schools to make the student-teaching experience more relevant and to emphasize the specific teaching skills the teachers they produce are expected to acquire and demonstrate.
Presenters:
•Mari Koerner, Dean, Mary Lou Fulton College of Education, Arizona State University
•Deborah Loewenberg Ball, Dean, School of Education, University of Michigan
Digital Inclusion and Learning – Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Research in Learning Technology
This is the November 2011 call for papers for a Special Issue of Research in Learning Technology, the Journal of the Association for Learning Technology (Volume 20, Number 4).
From January 2012 Research in Learning Technology will be published by Co-Action Publishing as an Open Access journal. Read the media release regarding the journal’s transition to Open Access.
Guest Editors
Jane Seale, Professor of Education, Plymouth University, UK
William Dutton, Professor of Internet Studies, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK
Deadlines
Abstracts can be submitted to Jane Seale for informal feedback until 1 March 2012.
Papers should be submitted via the online submission system by 1 May 2012. The new online submission system will open in January 2012 and further information is available here.
The Special Issue will be published in autumn 2012.
Call Summary
Digital inequities relating to socioeconomic status, income, level of education, ethnicity, gender, age, connectivity and geography are still affecting levels of access to technology for all kinds of people. Digital inclusion research therefore has a role to play in providing explanations and solutions to these inequities. This call for papers on digital inclusion and learning aims to sharpen our focus on what is known and unknown about digital inclusion in the context of learning, learners and education. Our conceptualisation of digital inclusion encompasses a wide range of technologies, learners and learning contexts.
We are seeking articles that can inform digital inclusion practice, policy or research. A variety of papers will be considered, including empirical, review and discussion papers. Of particular interest are papers that offer conceptual, methodological and analytical rigour. We welcome papers that are multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary in nature. No particular method or theory will be privileged in this special issue, but we do expect all accepted papers to critically engage with the complexity of the concept of digital inclusion. In particular, we welcome papers that seek to challenge common assumptions or widely accepted positions in the field of digital inclusion.
Call Detail
Research in the field of digital inclusion, particularly that which has focused on documenting the “digital divide”, has probably done a good job at increasing understanding of differences and inequities. Both large scale and small scale surveys have shown continuing demographic gaps with socioeconomic status, income, level of education, ethnicity, gender, age, connectivity and geography all consistently found to affect levels of access to technology. There is little basis, therefore, for being complacent about digital inequalities. Whilst we know that inequities exist, there are a number of things we still do not know much about and to which future digital inclusion research could usefully contribute. A number of research challenges exist including:
developing a conceptual framework that broadens our understanding of the complexity of digital exclusion and captures a wide range of inclusion-related opportunities, processes and outcomes;
developing methods that enable us to directly capture and get to the heart of the experience of the digitally excluded/included;
learning from existing individual and collective digital inclusion practice(s) in order to understand why sometimes technology related opportunities are not taken up, or inclusion outcomes don’t change.
These challenges will require digital inclusion research to elicit new data; to find new ways of getting this data or to aggregate data that already exists; and to do something useful with the data once it has been obtained. To meet these challenges, digital inclusion research will need to jump two hurdles. The first hurdle is that of being bold enough to step outside of current traditions in digital divide/inclusion research, if required, in order to collect and analyse data in different ways and consequently transform understanding. The second hurdle is that of being sufficiently robust and systematic in order to provide the necessary evidence of success (or failure) that persuades relevant key stakeholders to take transformative action.
These challenges are particularly pertinent for digital inclusion researchers working in learning and education contexts. The role for formal or informal learning in promoting digital inclusion could be described as essentially one of increasing the social capital of the digitally excluded; where social capital is understood as access, ability to use and desire to use technology. This role is not unproblematic and consideration of the role education might play raises important questions about whether education is reaching or can reach all those digitally excluded learners that “need” to be reached; how education can help learners make informed choices about technology access and use, including the choice to be digitally disengaged and the extent to which educating the digitally excluded leads to both genuine digital and social inclusion.
This call for papers on digital inclusion and learning aims to sharpen our focus on what is known and unknown about digital inclusion in the context of learning, learners and education. For the purpose of this special issue we are scoping digital inclusion in the following ways:
Technologies
We are interested in articles that focus on any kind of technology that assists learning in some way, for example: the Internet and the plethora of free content-services to which it provides access; VLEs; games; mobile and personal technologies; assistive technologies and social networking technologies. Potential questions include, but are not limited to:
To what extent do we need to design and develop new technologies capable of enhancing the digital inclusion of learners, or do we simply need to use current technologies in more creative and adaptive ways?
How do technologies mediate a learners’ relationship with their learning environments and wider society?
What prevents learners from accessing and using technologies in ways that might contribute to inclusive learning experiences?
Learners
We are interested in articles that address the learning experiences and opportunities of adults, children or young people with a specific focus on any individuals, groups or communities that are considered to be disadvantaged or marginalized in some way; where technologies might play a role in promoting inclusion. In education, digital inclusion is often talked about in the context of disability; but we are keen to expand discussions to other equally important, but perhaps less visible or acknowledged learners, for example looked after children, prisoners, travellers or those living in areas where power and connectivity present significant barriers. Potential questions include, but are not limited to:
Who should the recipients of digital inclusion focused education programmes be?
Do we know which learners are more or less likely to be digitally excluded in educational contexts? There is a lot of data about digitally excluded people in the wider society, is there equivalent data in educational contexts? What does this information tell us and what is missing?
Can education reach all those digitally excluded learners that “need” to be reached?
Learning and education
We are interested in articles that focus on either formal or informal learning; accredited or unaccredited learning in a variety of settings and contexts for example: schools, colleges, universities, libraries, community centres, hospitals, Internet cafes and homes. Potential questions include, but are not limited to:
To what extent can educating the digitally excluded lead to both genuine digital and social inclusion?
Can education truly enable learners to take matters into their own hands and exert control and choice over their technology use?
How can education systems and educators influence desire to use technology in those identified as non-users?
How do we avoid a new digital divide between people who have the power to manipulate their learning and those who, because they do not understand the potential of technology supported learning, cannot?
Are there limits or boundaries with regards to our commitment to transform the learning places and spaces where digital exclusion exists?
Research
We are interested in articles that seek to advance digital inclusion research in two very specific ways: Firstly in terms of describing and evaluating new methodologies for researching the value and impact of technologies on the learning lives and experiences of disadvantaged learners. Secondly in terms of contributing to a richer and more developed theorisation of digital inclusion in the context of learning and education; which offers fuller insights into why and how learners are digitally excluded and why some digital inclusion projects and practices are more successful than others. Potential questions include, but are not limited to:
Are the current methods and theories employed by digital inclusion researchers sufficiently rigorous and creative to enable new insights and knowledge to be gained about how to reduce the digital exclusion of learners?
In order to embrace the complexity of the experience and impact of digital exclusion on learners, will digital inclusion researchers be required to develop a different more reflexive and dialogic relationship with learners and teachers?
Policy
We are interested in articles that examine how digital inclusion related policies, laws, standards and guidelines influence and inform practice in learning contexts or evaluate the extent to which digital inclusion research informs the policy making decisions of funders and other key stakeholders. Potential questions include, but are not limited to:
Is digital inclusion related policy sufficiently long-sighted, flexible or creative to enable or support genuine and meaningful transformation for learners?
To what extent are the aims and goals of digital inclusion policy at conflict with the aims and goals of those learners identified as “at risk” of digital exclusion?
Practice
We are interested in articles that seek to engage with the question of whether it is possible or desirable to identify “best practice” with regards to digital inclusion and the extent to which that practice can be meaningfully evaluated to provide evidence for “successful” outcomes. Potential questions include, but are not limited to:
Is it helpful for practitioners (e.g. teachers, youth workers; social care staff) to be given digital inclusion guidelines and recommendations?
How can practitioners prove that their use of technologies with learners has had a beneficial outcome in ways that are meaningful to learners and sensitive to the contexts in which technologies are being employed?
In what ways can we usefully learn about/from the existing practices of users/learners?
What is the best way to develop and support the digital inclusion practice of teachers particularly in relation to taking risks and tolerating occasional failures?
Do the different digital inclusion practices that exist have to be aligned or reconciled, if so, how might this be achieved?
Does the search for “best” digital inclusion practice merely create new divides or divisions?
Types of papers
A variety of papers will be considered, including empirical, review and discussion papers. Of particular interest are papers that offer conceptual, methodological and analytical rigour; and make a contribution to knowledge in one of the following ways:
Provide unique insights into the impact of technologies on the learning lives and experiences of disadvantaged or marginalised individuals, groups or communities;
Describe and evaluate digital inclusion experiences or practices, informed by a particular methodological or theoretical approach;
Contribute to debates about the best or most meaningful outcomes to use to demonstrate to a range of stakeholders that inclusive technologies have had a positive impact;
Describe and evaluate the design, development and implementation of new inclusive technologies;
Critique the role of theory in digital inclusion research, policy or practice;
Critically review current digital inclusion research, policy or practice literature and identify gaps in knowledge or areas that are weak and need further development in terms of evidence, methods or theory.
The digital inclusion and learning field is both multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary and we welcome therefore papers that represent the range of cognate disciplines, for example education; psychology, sociology, computer science; media studies; social policy, library and information sciences; law and economics. No particular method or theory will be privileged in this special issue, but we do expect all accepted papers to critically engage with the complexity of the concept of digital inclusion. In particular, we welcome papers that seek to challenge common assumptions or widely accepted positions in the field of digital inclusion.
About the Guest Editors
Jane Seale is Professor of Education at Plymouth University. She has undertaken a number of key national co-ordination and leadership roles in the field of e-learning and research including President of the Association for Learning Technology and Co-Director of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods. Jane’s research operates at the intersection of education, technology and disability and she has over 20 years of experience examining the role of technology in promoting inclusion, particularly for those with learning disabilities. Her 2006 book “E-learning and Disability in Higher Education: Accessibility Research and Practice” is in over 450 libraries world-wide. Currently Jane is convenor of the TLRP Technology Enhanced Learning Digital Inclusion Forum and has produced a commentary which reviews current digital inclusion research and practice literature.
William Dutton is Professor of Internet Studies at the Oxford Internet Institute, Universityof Oxford, Fellow of Balliol College, and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Southern California. In the UK, he was a Fulbright Scholar 1986-87, was National Director of the UK’s Programme on Information and Communication Technologies (PICT) from 1993 to 1996, and founding director of the OII during its first decade, for which he received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011. Professor Dutton is Principal Investigator of the Oxford e-Social Science Project (OeSS), supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, and Principal Investigator of the Oxford Internet Surveys (OxIS), a key resource on the use and impact of the Internet in Britain, that is one component of the World Internet Project, an international collaboration comprising over 20 nations. His concept of the ‘Fifth Estate’ has created a new research project and a book in progress. His service includes chairing the Advisory Committee for Englandof the UK’s Office of Communications (Ofcom), and participating on the Innovation Committee of NHS Direct.
Submission and review process
The submission of abstracts for informal feedback is encouraged. They can be sent directly to Jane Seale until 1 March 2012.
Full papers must be submitted according to the journal’s Instructions for Authors.
Papers should be submitted via the online submission system by 1 May 2012.
Papers received will undergo double blind peer review and authors will receive feedback and where appropriate, an opportunity to revise their paper. An additional round of reviewing is sometimes used to encourage authors to improve their paper, either for this special issue, or a subsequent issue of Research in Learning Technology.
For other queries and guidance relating to the call please contact the Special Issue Editors:
This report studies the retention practices of over 60 North American colleges and universities, exploring the most critical factors to retention success as cited by the survey participants. The comprehensive data in the report covers a wide array of trends essential to any administration’s assessment of its own retention policies, including detailed retention rates for first-year and part-time students, institutional spending on consultants and conferences, overall tutoring efforts, and the perceived impact of various student services on retention success. How does the current economic climate affect financial aid and tuition, and how do these, in turn, affect student retention? What role do exit interviews play? Academic advising and counseling services? Childcare services? Peer mentoring?
Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:
In the past year, the colleges surveyed spent an average of $16,453 on consulting services (excluding spending on conferences) to aid in student retention, or $3.37 per full-time enrolled student.
From Fall 2010 to Fall 2011, the colleges in the sample retained an average of 71.86% of first-year students.
46% of community colleges reported that access to tutoring services had a dramatic impact on retention.
Childcare services are offered to those students with children in 24.19% of the schools in the sample.
31.75% of the colleges sampled maintain records that enable the college to pinpoint students who are not engaged in any or very few extracurricular activities.
Colleges sampled report that 53.41% of students who start at the college as fall term freshmen ultimately graduate from the college at which they started.
The 116-page report presents data broken out by enrollment size, public or private school status, and type of college, offering end users a look at the strategies and practices of a broad range of institutions. Participants share their success stories as well as the pitfalls of student retention efforts and their expectations for the future. The report is available from Primary Research Group for $109.00. PDF versions are currently available and the print edition will ship on December 16, 2011. For a table of contents and a free excerpt, or to place an order, visit our website at www.PrimaryResearch.com or call us at 212-736-2316. Primary Research Group publications are also available through most major book distributors and research report vendors.
Published in Print: November 16, 2011, as The Value of a Single Standard for Higher Education
As a former president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, I have worked for years to strengthen education in many countries. I have come to appreciate that the ideal education system in any nation needs to be sufficiently diverse to meet the needs of students from many backgrounds and with varying aspirations for both their lives and future careers.
Here in the United States, the framework for education has slowly evolved to meet the changing needs of American students. Today, we are moving toward an education system that, at all levels, provides a mix of private and public institutions that serve an array of students. By increasing opportunities for students at all levels of education, we can provide them with the ability to pursue the education that is the best fit for them.
Some students attend secondary institutions with low graduation and college-acceptance rates. Instead of acting as though those students have no desire for postsecondary education, we should encourage them to attend institutions of higher education that focus on helping nontraditional students.
Today, for many in our nation, the road to a career does not involve a traditional four-year college. Students from a range of backgrounds are electing to pursue higher education at for-profit colleges, some of them online. More than 3 million students attended accredited colleges and universities in the for-profit private sector in 2008-09. Of those, 40 percent were students of color, and 61 percent were women, according to the U.S. Department of Education, and more than 80 percent of students in for-profit colleges are the first in their families to attend college.
Education has always been a critical source of opportunity, and data show that a college education can dramatically affect an individual’s ability to find a good job to support a family and contribute to the community. This is especially true for students coming from high schools that do not traditionally send large numbers of students to postsecondary institutions.
As the number of students who seek education at for-profit colleges grows, so do controversies. Although the end goal of these institutions is honorable, not all of these schools have operated in an equally honorable manner. It should also be noted that many of the issues that exist at for-profit colleges exist at other institutions of higher education as well.
To encourage appropriate and responsible conduct across all of higher education, there needs to be a higher standard of conduct for institutional operations and accountability among all colleges and universities.
Earlier this year, I joined the board of advisers to the Foundation for Educational Success. One of our charges was to create a single high standard for all institutions of higher education. I joined this effort along with Thomas H. Kean, the former governor of New Jersey; former Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell; Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, a professor of education at Harvard University; and Elizabeth Molina Morgan, the executive director of Grad Nation, an initiative of the America’s Promise Alliance.
We recently released standards of responsible conduct and transparency, a set of enforceable principles that not only address public concerns, but also ensure that all students have access to high-quality educational opportunities. The standards define new guidelines, as agreed to by their signatories, which include the Kaplan Higher Education Corp., the Career Education Corp., and Vatterott Educational Centers Inc. The signatories are required to obtain an independent audit of their practices to comply with the standards’ enforcement mechanism.
The standards include provisions for providing information about tuition costs and fees, and graduation and job-placement rates, as well as student debt obligations. The foundation will create a website where students can read about best practices around disclosure, transparency, and academic-readiness counseling.
What is most needed is for colleges to create transparent and enforceable standards of conduct that exceed the existing requirements of academic accreditation bodies, state regulators, and the federal Education Department.
Drawing on my experience as a former college president, I believe that these standards will improve the educational experience for the 3 million students currently enrolled in for-profit colleges, as well as the millions of students who will attend these schools in the years to come. Ultimately, I am confident that these standards can serve as a model for all institutions of higher education.
For-profit colleges play an essential role in educating millions of men and women and helping them enter or return to the workforce. And they help our nation become more competitive in the global economy by equipping students with skills that match job opportunities. The effort to establish standards of best practices deserves our support.
Jonathan Fanton was the president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and of the New School for Social Research. He serves on the board of advisers of the Foundation for Educational Success, in Washington.
Clayton R Wright has compiled a listing of Educational Technology & related Education Conferences occurring across four continents between December 2011 and June 2012.
The list contains selected conferences that focus on the use of technology in educational settings and on teaching, learning, and educational administration.
I. Elaine Allen*
20 November 2011
Issue 198 – University World News
I am co-director of the Babson Survey Research Group which, for the last nine years, has published a survey of online education in the United States. It has yet to see any clear indication of an overall slowdown in the growth of online education but there are changes in the differential growth of programmes and in the belief that, in some areas, online education is superior for students.
The rate of growth of online enrolments was slower over the last year, but it continues to outpace the rate of growth of the total higher education student population in the US. Every year since the first report in this series in 2003, the number of students taking at least one online course has increased at a rate far in excess of the growth of the overall student body.
The most recent estimate, for the autumn of 2010, shows an increase of 10% over autumn 2009 to a total of 6.1 million students taking at least one course online for that semester.
This is an almost four-fold increase in students taking courses online since our first survey in 2002, and represents a compound annual growth rate of 18.3% over the nine-year period. By comparison, the overall higher education student body in the US has grown at an annual rate of just over 2% during this same period.
Thirty-one per cent of all higher education students now take at least one course online.
There has been wide variability in the year-to-year growth of online education, with large increases through to 2005, smaller rates in 2006 and 2007, and jumps in 2008 and 2009 which are believed to be due to the economic recession sending many people back to school to finish degrees and improve their marketability for jobs.
There has also been a shift in the types of online programmes that are growing, shrinking or maintaining steady enrolment. Engineering, which saw some decreased enrolment in earlier surveys, is now showing steady enrolment and growth areas are health professions and related sciences and the liberal arts.
How academics rate online courses
The view that online education is ‘just as good as’ face-to-face instruction is by no means universally held.
There has been a slow but steady increase in the proportion of academic leaders who have a positive view of the relative quality of the learning outcomes for online courses against comparable face-to-face courses, but there remains a consistent and sizable minority who see online classes as inferior.
This year’s results show a small increase among those who say online is at least as good as face-to-face classes. The proportion of academic leaders who now believe online education is as good as or better than face-to-face classes is now just over two thirds of all respondents, up from 57% in the first year of the study.
This does translate to a significant minority of one third of all academic leaders polled who continue to believe that the learning outcomes for online courses are inferior to those for face-to-face instruction. And this assessment shows a stronger dichotomy if we classify the institutions by whether they currently have any online offerings.
There are several areas of education where academic leaders rate online classes higher than face-to-face classes: student satisfaction, scheduling flexibility and the ability for students to learn at their own pace. At the other end of the spectrum, a majority believe that student-to-student interaction suffers in online courses and opinions are split on the quality of faculty-to-student communication.
Acceptance of online education
Faculty acceptance of online education has changed little since our first report. The perceived acceptance rate by academics varies widely between colleges and universities with online offerings and those without such offerings.
More than a quarter of chief academic officers at institutions with no online offerings report that their academics do not accept its value; which is, perhaps, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Institutions that offer only online courses and those that offer both online courses and full online programmes report that only 7% of their academics do not fully accept online education.
While the acceptance at institutions that are more engaged in online education is greater than at other institutions, there remains a level of concern among all academic leaders about the full acceptance of online instruction by their faculty.
Part of this observed pattern may be the result of hiring practices – institutions with extensive online offerings may be hiring teachers specifically for online education. In addition to this, fewer than one third of respondents reported that their academics receive any training for teaching face-to-face courses, but more than three quarters report training (internal or external programmes or mentoring) for faculty teaching online. This may also influence their belief in faculty acceptance of online education.
Use of open educational resources
Finally, new to the survey last year and asked again in 2011, was knowledge and use of an increasing number of open educational resources available for all courses (online or face-to-face).
Most surveyed academic leaders believe that open education resources will have value for their campus; 57% agree that they have value and fewer than 5% disagree.
These results are similar to those for the same question when asked two years ago, with one notable difference. The proportion of for-profit institutions agreeing with this statement has shown a large increase over the two-year period (moving from 49.8% in 2009 to 72.4% in 2011). Both private non-profit institutions and public institutions display smaller increases over this period.
* I Elaine Allen is professor of statistics and entrepreneurship at Babson College in the US, and co-director of the Babson Survey Research Group at Babson College.
* The full survey report for 2011 is available here. For more information on the Babson Survey Research Group, click here
The report looks closely at how libraries are servicing distance learning programs. The report presents hard data on materials purchasing for distance learning students, use of eBooks and videos, the impact of distance learning on licensing of resources, the provision of information literacy classes and tutorials, shipping costs, relations with faculty and students, staffing and budgeting, and many other facets of distance learning librarianship.
Just a few of the many findings from this 154-page report are:
More than 50% of college libraries sampled offered some type of training program or special class to distance learning students.
72.73% of colleges with 500-2,000 distance learning students had a distance learning webpage on their website that catered specifically to the needs of distance learning students.
Online courses in information literacy were offered by 28.24% of colleges in the sample; 40% of colleges with less than 2,000 students enrolled offered them.
77.78% of research universities offered video tutorials in information literacy, and public colleges offered them somewhat more than private colleges did.
No college with less than 500 distance learning students specifically allocated funds for distance learners in its budget.
4-year degree-granting colleges and MA- and PhD-granting colleges were the most critical of their efforts to cater to distance learners, with 62.5% and 60% saying that they should be doing more.
Data in the nearly 100-page report is based on a survey of more than 75 academic libraries. Data is broken out by type of college, size of the total student population, and size of the distance learning program. To view a table of contents and an excerpt, or to order, visit the publication’s page here.
The October 2011 edition of Learning Technology’s newsletter is out now, featuring a Special Theme Section on
“Virtual Worlds for Academic, Organizational, and Life Long Learning”.
Sue Gregory of UNE’s School of Education and the DEHub, has submitted Article No. 1 “Collaboration through virtual worlds in Australia and New Zealand higher education institutions”.
This newsletter is available by clicking on the following link:
The UNESCO/COL Guidelines on Open Educational Resources in Higher Education outlines key issues and suggestions for integrating OER into higher education to support quality teaching and learning.
The aim of this document, prepared by the Secretariat, is to encourage decision makers in governments and institutions to invest in the systematic production, adaptation and use of OER and to bring them into the mainstream of higher education in order to improve the quality of curricula and teaching and to reduce costs.
To watch the video footage from the lighting event held over the SLEX weekend, please click on the following:
The 3dedrats GOBO light and Ratmaze game were projected throughout the East Mall in Armidale on each night of the SLEX weekend, resulting in a vivid light show.
The logo was a tri-coloured rat image created from a physical template placed in front of a lighting source that was pre-programmed to display the moving shape onto the ground and nearby buildings of the east mall.
The Ratmaze game was created by Matt Cabanag from the Faculty of Science at Macquarie University and the Macquarie ICT’s Innovation Centre.
Click on the link below to see photos from the SLEX weekend in Armidale, where the DEHub proudly sponsored MacICT’s 3dedrats festival that ran throughout October 2011.
The 3dedrats GOBO light and Ratmaze game were projected throughout the East Mall in Armidale on each night of the SLEX weekend, resulting in a vivid light show.
The logo was a tri-coloured rat image created from a physical template placed in front of a lighting source that was pre-programmed to display the moving shape onto the ground and nearby buildings of the east mall.
The Ratmaze game was created by Matt Cabanag from the Faculty of Science at Macquarie University and the Macquarie ICT’s Innovation Centre.
The DEHub would like to thank Westpac in Armidale as well as the Imperial Hotel in Armidale for the use of their buildings that made this light show possible.
Keep watching this space for more footage from the event….
At the Digital Information Management Summit on November 9 2011, Michael Lijic, International Affairs & Digital Strategy Manager from The Copyright Agency, presented the results of a digital publishing trends survey. The report can be obtained free via the link below:
The report shows that more readers are turning to reading e-books, e-journals, e-newspapers, and that the conversion rate is increasing with time, with the trend for book stores to become less popular places to purchase books. The trend is here to stay, and if costs lessen to access such resources, the uptake will grow at an even faster rate.
As the breadth of technology expands globally, so do the boundaries of information security. The 10th annual Security Professionals Conference will attempt to recalibrate security during a paradigm shift.
The conference, “Security Everywhere: Exploring the Expanding World of Security,” will address our goal as information security professionals of supporting our constituents’ ability to take advantage of modern computing in safe and secure ways. And, as the definition of “security” grows to include privacy, identity management, physical security, information assurance, and more, it is imperative to share information and experiences with peers.
Share your experience, stories, and lessons learned—submit a proposal to present at the Security Professionals Conference.
Start Your Proposal Here
Attend the Proposal Orientation Webinar on Tuesday, November 8, 4:00–5:00 p.m. ET (UTC-4). (An archived recording will be available after this date.)
This session is designed to answer any questions you might have about presenting. Conference staff and the program chairperson will talk you through the event theme and application process.
Explore the Proposal Preparation Checklist and the following resources, which were created to help with your proposal submission:
Help create an innovative and informative program, make valuable contacts, gain personal recognition, and promote your institution’s achievements. Submit your proposal by December 16.
About the Conference Program
The Security Professionals Conference follows three key tracks: Awareness and Training; Governance, Risk, and Compliance; and Technologies, Operations, and Practices. These focus areas stem from the understandings that our institutional data resides in environments where borders continue to dissolve and that constant accessibility and portability have become commonplace.
This means that:
Individuals and their choices are essential in preserving security and privacy
Data resides on a diverse array of personal and enterprise devices
Global and instantaneous information sharing are readily available
Attacks and malware now focus on every facet of our environment
This event is brought to you by the EDUCAUSE and Internet2 Higher Education Information Security Council and the REN-ISAC. If you have experience with these topics and concepts, share your experience with your peers: submit a proposal before December 16.
On Tuesday 1 Nov, Ms. Irina Bokova, Director General of UNESCO will be officiating the launch of:
1. The UNESCO Open Educational Resources Platform
2. The UNESCO/COL Guidelines for OER in Higher Education
The UNESCO Open Educational Resources Platform is a first-ever, innovative online Platform offering selected UNESCO publications as open educational resources allowing our global community of stakeholders to freely use, copy, adapt, and re-share.
The OER Platform will be launched with an OER version of the UNESCO Model Curricula for Journalism Education with shared OER adaptations from the Polytechnic of Namibia and the University of Namibia.
The UNESCO/COL Guidelines on Open Educational Resources in Higher Education outlines key issues and suggestions for integrating OER into higher education to support quality teaching and learning. The aim of this document, prepared by the Secretariat, is to encourage educational stakeholders to invest in the production, adaptation, and use of OER, and to improve the quality of curricula and teaching.
We’ll be tweeting the Launch on #oerlaunch and would greatly appreciate it if you would please forward this message to all your OER colleagues, and to tweet and retweet.
Please excuse the cross-postings and don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
One of the world’s biggest education publishers has joined with one of the most dominant and iconic software companies on the planet to bring colleges a new—and free—learning-management system with the hopes of upending services that affect just about every instructor, student, and college in the country.
The DEQuarterly is now released with a new onscreen presentation using issuu as the published format.
We are now in preparation for future editions, if you are interested in providing a short paper (up to 1,000 words) plus as short 50 word biography and photo please send me your proposal for consideration by our editorial committee or contact me if you have any questions concerning this edition dehubpm@une.edu.au
Avoid Reading Failure. Predict Outcomes.
Lexia Reading® v8 supports foundational reading development, pre-K–12. By predicting student performance and prescribing instructional intensity, Lexia Reading helps millions of students learn to read — without ever stopping to take a test. Welcome to the Lexia classroom. Find out more.
New from Fountas & Pinnell
Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell bring to life The Continuum of Literacy Learning with live-from-the-classroom video segments that serve as best-practice exemplars for observation, discussion, and application. View a sample video.
Arguments over requiring young girls to get vaccinated for the human papillomavirus were nearly extinguished—until Republican presidential contenders attacked Texas Gov. Rick Perry for a 2007 executive order that would have made the vaccine mandatory for 6th grade girls.
Here’s a link to another pro learning futures video which cites some of the popular usage stats around the uptake of social media and new digital technology. I’m still thinking about the statement that ‘when you lose your mobile, you lose part of your brain’.
In many respects, the unsubstantiated claims about the benefits of the technology revolution in education reinforce Neil Selwyn’s recent editorial in the British Journal of Educational Technology which writes in praise of pessimism and the need for negativity in educational technology. He begins the Editorial by stating:
“Educational technology is an essentially ‘positive project.’ Most people working in this area are driven by an underlying belief that digital technologies are—in some way—capable of improving education” (p.713).
Neil then goes on to say…
“I would like to argue that this inherent positivity has become an all-encompassing—if not hegemonic—feature of educational technology scholarship. Indeed, I would contend that it limits the validity and credibility of the field as a site of serious academic endeavour” (p.713)
I have followed Neil’s work for almost a decade and he continues to stand out as one of the leading scholars in the field who brings some balance to the techno-hype that runs throughout the learning futures discourse. As Selwyn reminds us not every new technology is progress:
“Given all that we know about the social complexities of technology use in education, I would like to argue that a pessimistic stance is the most sensible, and possibly the most productive, perspective to take. As such, I am advancing an approach that simply accepts education, technology and society as it is—for better and (more often) for worse” (p.714).
I encourage you to read the full Editorial to see how Selwyn invites the educational technology community to pursue ‘pessimism with a purpose’. It’s a very good read.
Join us as we continue the OER webinar series where experts are demystifying the world of open educational resources (OER). This month’s session will feature OER development models and creation tools. Next month a panel of OER experts will discuss the sustainability of OER projects and the issues surrounding funding. Sign up for these sessions today!
If you missed one of the previous sessions, you can easily get up to speed by checking out the archives. The fourth and final webinar, Funding OER: Sustainability, is on the calendar for October.
OER Session 4 — Funding OER: Sustainability
How do OER projects and programs get started? How are they maintained? Where are funding resources? Can OER projects work without external funding?
These questions and more will be answered by our panel consisting of Cable Green (Director of Global Learning, Creative Commons), Paul Stacey (Director Communication, Stakeholder & Academic Relations; BC campus), and James Glapa-Grossklag (Dean, Educational Technology, Learning Resources, and Distance Learning College of the Canyons). Each will take their unique stance on issues of sustainability and open standards, various funding approaches, and success stories involving everything from individual efforts to consortia based programs.
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The International Journal of Learningseeks an editor, or team of editors, for a one-year term. This is an opportunity to make a significant contribution to one of the leading journals in its field, the journal’s associated conference and, more broadly, the knowledge-community which the journal and conference seek to serve.
The roles of the editor are to:
write an introduction for the Journal volume which would be included in the first issue for the year, and possibly on the website, the newsletter and other appropriate places or for the purposes of marketing and promotion.
collate papers addressing a theme of the editor’s choosing into a book, to be launched at the conference at the completion of the editor’s term. The chapters may be drawn from submissions to the journal during this or recent years, and other material as considered appropriate.
actively solicit manuscripts for the Journal from well-known and notable members of the community—these would could be refereed if the author wished, or regarded as ‘invited papers’.
assist the Commissioning Editor with suggestions of supplementary peer reviewers for specific papers (and this will never be burdensome – note that the Commissioning Editor of the Journal finalizes a majority of the peer reviewer requirements based on thematic matching and ‘mutual obligation’ principles in which all author requested to review up to three other papers).
promote the journal throughout their network and other associated networks.
maintain regular communications with the community via periodical blog posts to the community website (which feeds automatically to the email newsletter, Facebook and Twitter).
The editor will be offered a complimentary electronic subscription to the Journal, free copies of the book which they edit, an electronic subscription to the book series as well as complimentary registrations to attend the conferences at the beginning and end of their term.
Qualifications
The Editor of the Journal must possess the following attributes:
They will have successfully obtained higher degree, and have academic teaching and scholarly research experience in an area related to the subject matter of the Journal.
They will have published in this or other comparable scholarly journals.
Applicants are asked to send:
a cover letter outlining their interest and relevant experience, and the ways in which you would propose to enhance the profile of the journal
a curriculum vitae
a special theme outline: a title with paragraph explanation.
Dr Rosalind James has commenced as the new Director of the DEHub: Innovation in distance education. Dr James has worked with the DEHub since before its inception, having assisted to write the grant for funding, and at UNE for many years, as a Research Fellow with DEHub and with Project 2012: Flexible and Online. Prior to the DEHub, Dr James was a course co-ordinator and lecturer in foundational pathway courses in UNE’s Teaching and Learning Centre (TLC), and as an academic mentor for transitional students. Like many in the distance education field, Rosalind comes from a strong background established in other disciplines. She has been an archaeological consultant and a lecturer in Archaeology and Environmental Science, and has worked in diverse companies and government departments around the world as a senior manager and technical ICT consultant in the commercial information and communications technology arena.
Her current research and publications interest is in implementation and integration of ICT in learning, in general, and Web 2.0 and social networking technologies, in particular; but also covers business use of technology and its implications for graduate attributes and professional development for academics teaching by distance. Other projects under Dr James’ direction that have a direct focus on the mission of the DEHub are the ICDE’s Regulatory Frameworks for Distance Education in the Southwest Pacific/South East Asia region and a large collaborative project to develop EduONE, a community education portal offering open educational resources for lifelong learning.
The DEHub Database of Research in Distance Education has another 68 records added in August, bringing the current total for 2011 to 593 additions, and has exceeded 2010 additions.
This searchable web database contains details of 7,481 books, articles, conference papers and reports on various aspects of distance education and distance learning from publishers in Australia and overseas.
Open Educational Resources (OER) Survey Invitation
We are investigating issues concerning OER in Australia and your views and perceptions would be invaluable and warmly welcomed. The purpose of this survey is to provide an environmental scan of the use and understanding of Open Educational Resources within Australian higher education institutions. Please click to access our survey: http://uneprofessions.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_8iFka6ZlrVaip5q
Further details on this ALTC project, “Adoption, use and management of Open Educational Resources (OERs) to enhance teaching and learning in Australia” can be obtained from http://wikiresearcher.org/OER_in_Australia
Please do not hesitate to contact the project’s chief investigator Carina Bossu, at cbossu3@une.edu.au, if you have any further questions related to this project.
Your contribution to this research would be greatly appreciated.
www.edweek.org
I am co-director of the Babson Survey Research Group which, for the last nine years, has published a survey of online education in the United States. It has yet to see any clear indication of an overall slowdown in the growth of online education but there are changes in the differential growth of programmes and in the belief that, in some areas, online education is superior for students.
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