Online Course Services Reaching Milestone Numbers

Coursera announced recently it has registered one million students for its free online courses, while rival Udacity says it has more than 739,000 students signed up for its massive open online courses (MOOCs).

The idea of free online courses is attractive, even though no university credit is earned in many MOOCs. It helps that a number of top-flight universities have signed on with Coursera and Udacity has some of the best-known scholars in the country providing its educational material.

While a million registered students sounds impressive, some details—such as whether a student signed up for a course but didn’t actually follow through on the assignments—are not spelled out. However, such milestone numbers are the type of figures that will make news as the media tries to explain how education is coping in the age of high tech.

How to Get Accredited Online Education

The interesting thing now is that a lot of people embrace Online Education and Distance Learning. There are many reasons for such increase in the number of people who are undergoing their higher education degrees online. The reason why a lot of people from all walks of life are pursuing online degree programs is because of the quality of the courses.

Regardless of where you carry on your education, whether in the normal school settings or on the Internet, the lecturer is responsible for seeing you succeed. There are benefits that you get from lecturers and professors who supervise your online education. For instance, you can easily email them or even do voice connections with your supervisors as the need arises.

If you enroll for an online course, you will have access to lecturers and professors that are at the peak of their fields of studies. With the Internet, teachers or professors are not restricted by geography. Your computer becomes your classroom by way of an online education program. The only setback associated with continuing education in normal school settings is size of classrooms. Usually classes that are held in normal school settings are very large, so having access to a teacher or professor on one on one coaching can be a challenging task.

Also, studying online, you are in cordial relationship with your professor or teacher regardless of the fact that your location is far away from your teacher, because you can link up with your teacher directly on the internet. Online students enjoy their studies and experience better connection and have access with their teachers than what is experienced by students in the traditional schools settings.

Following the foregoing, I believe that you would like to consider furthering your education online, especially if you have a day job and a family to maintain while needing higher education. Think about this. You have nothing to lose but lots of gains to make, especially the convenience and stress free nature of studying at your own time and in the comfort of your home.

Students Ready for More Tech in the Classroom

The latest CDW-G student survey on education technology found just 23% of those polled were satisfied with the way instructors use class time. Those who were satisfied tended to listen to fewer lectures and use technology more.

“I do learn more with a mixed style, where the class is opened up to group discussion,” said Hannah Davis, a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who was part of a student panel during the Learn Now, Lecture Later: The New College Experience session at the Campus Technology 2012 conference in Boston.

The report surveyed 1,015 students, faculty, and IT staff at the high school and college level last May and June. Technology is employed more in college classrooms than high school, with 74% of college students using digital content, 55% making use of smartphones, and 53% taking advantage of recorded lectures.

“I like having the lecture online, so I can pause it and rewind,” said panelist Mario Solorzano, a student at Arizona State University. He told of an English professor at ASU who uses Skype to connect with students after office hours and of a grad student who created a Facebook study group.

In addition to greater opportunities to use technology in the classroom, students say they would like to see digital formats become standardized and the price of e-books come down.

“I find e-books priced much the same as textbooks and can’t bring myself to buy it for the same price as a hardcover, even though I would find them beneficial,” said Tyler Hughes, a student at the University of Michigan.

There are plenty of other challenges for IT and faculty to work out. Andy Lausch, vice president of higher education at CDW-G and moderator of the student-panel session, pointed to budget constraints, class size, and time for professional development as the biggest obstacles. Another hurdle could be faculty mindset, since the survey also found that 88% of respondents view moving away from traditional lectures as a challenge.

“Students say classroom time is moving in the right direction, but they want a greater mix of learning models, with more hands-on assignments and more virtual learning,” said Lausch. 

Aiming K-12 Books at Parental Rental

Instead of trying to persuade K-12 schools or district boards to adopt digital textbooks on a widespread scale, Kno is embarking on a different strategy: marketing e-textbooks to parents one at a time.

The software company just signed up to license textbook content from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to create digital versions of its K-12 books, which Kno will rent to Mom and Dad at $9.99 per year per title, or as Kno CEO Osman Rashid put it, “for the price of a couple of Happy Meals.”

HMH has an estimated 50% of the K-12 textbook market, which means there’s an awful lot of kids out there with at least one HMH title in their backpacks. As Publishers Weekly explained, the digital texts will reproduce the pages of the printed texts, so Junior doesn’t get confused in doing homework. But the e-books will also sport helpful extras, such as 3-D animated demonstrations, flash cards, highlighting, and a digital journal for note-taking.

TechCrunch pointed out the pricing doesn’t exactly add up to a pot of gold for Kno, although for the publisher it’s bonus money on top of the print sales. However, Rashid is banking on the low price to attract more parents to try out the digital books at home. Once they do, he hopes they’ll push for adoption at their children’s schools.

If more youngsters get accustomed to digital books while still in K-12, in a few years that could ratchet up demand for the college-level digital books that Kno already provides through partnerships with higher-education publishers.

In Defense of Publishers and Digital

Brian Kibby, president of McGraw-Hill Education, threw down the gauntlet in a recent essay for Inside Higher Education, asserting that there needs to be a complete shift to digital in higher education, and it needs to be done within the next 36 months. He claims lagging grades and student graduation rates, along with graduates not leaving schools with the skills employers need, as the reasons the digital shift is so important.

The problem with this challenge is those paying for the course materials aren’t buying it, according to Daniel Luzer, web editor of the Washington Monthly.

“That’s because students don’t actually like the digital model,” Luzer wrote. “While electronic might work well enough for some forms of reading: novels (particularly the trash sort where you don’t want people to see what you’re reading on the subway or whatever) and magazine articles, it’s not actually all that good for studying, where underlining and marking up the text is part of what enables people to learn. It’s just hard to study using anything other than print.”

He then suggests the possibility of an ulterior motive to Kibby’s challenge.

“What students really want are used or rental textbooks,” Luzer said. “Textbook rentals are very popular on college campuses. But then, McGraw-Hill doesn’t make any money off textbook rentals or used books.”

Making publishers out to be the bad guys may be good reading on a blog, but Luzer seems to fail to understand where digital course materials and education are headed, which is part of Kibby's point. Digital course materials of the future will be not be the “PDF-equivalent” that they are today, and it will not be about “reading” text like we may have in the pre- and early-digital dark ages.

While Kibby’s forecast may be aggressively optimistic, the future of course materials will be more digital, and more value-adding in terms of contributing to student success. What will replace textbooks are products that are interactive, incorporate assessments, and which are tied to improving learning outcomes. Most major publishers, like McGraw, are making substantive investments in higher education gaming solutions, assessment of content mastery, re-envisioned LMS and learning environments, adaptive learning materials, and a range of other digital products that we would hardly recognize as “textbooks.”

Regarding the ulterior motive ascribed to Kibby’s challenge, publishers like McGraw are publicly traded commercial enterprises, and thus have a distinct incentive to maximize financial returns. If current business practices (e.g., used and rental) do not allow them to generate revenue off of products they originally created, then we should expect they will explore and promote products and business models that do.

What students want is value at a reasonable price. That does not necessarily mean “used or rental” textbooks. They are just the perceived best option at the current time.

Our mission should be to improve educational affordability and student success. We should learn to stop bashing the publishers like an autoimmune response to change.

Do I like every publisher business practice?  No.  Are course material prices too high (generally speaking)?  Yes.  Are arguments like this productive or lead to better solutions?  Not likely.

We would be much better served by finding ways to be part of the new technologies and delivery models, and helping find ways to improve them, rather than giving the long-term suppliers and partners for our core product reasons to work against and around us. Let us take some accountability and help create options that address both affordability and student success, recognizing that many of these options will be substantively digital in the possibly not-to-distant future.

Could Watermark Provide DRM Solution?

Publishers can’t be blamed for trying to safeguard their assets with digital rights management protection on their e-titles, particularly against large-scale file sharing.

The problem is DRM does not really deter anyone determined to share files, which led Dana Robinson, a adjunct professor of law at the University of San Diego School of Law and partner with Techlaw LLP, to propose a solution in an article for Digital Book World. His solution would be to create e-books with a watermark place throughout the book.

The e-book’s buyer would have to provide personal information for the watermark by agreeing to terms and conditions that would prohibit the resale or distribution of the title.

“The point of making a watermark that shows the user’s personal information is to create a disincentive for the user to pass the book along to unknown third parties, deputizing the user to act as a gatekeeper, protecting the book from wrongful distribution,” Robinson wrote, adding that removing the watermark could then be a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Robinson points out that his watermark solution would not prevent people from sharing their book with family or close friends, but that they’ve always done that with printed books. His watermark is aimed at individuals trying to gain financially from someone else’s work.

“What e-book publishers need is a way to distribute e-books with as little hassle as possible, while ensuring that the publisher can sue pirates and stop e-book sales, rental, and large-scale sharing,” he said.

Online Education - What's Out There?

Online education is becoming very popular and sought after these days. This is owing to the emergence of newer technologies, specialized, new subjects, and less time for traditional methods of education. The latest technologies like file sharing, instant messaging, online forums, and other interactive features make online education the most convenient and preferred method for higher education nowadays.

So what exactly is this online education? This is the educational training provided and obtained through the medium of the Internet. The trainer can be located anywhere and the student elsewhere. The students can be at their homes or any place where they have access to the Internet to learn the information being provided to them. There are many online courses ranging from a variety of subjects like professional courses to short term courses in various disciplines. Some courses require the students and teachers to meet in physical settings on a periodical basis for the purpose of conducting exams or for laboratory trainings while some courses do not need any meetings other than the online meetings. The number of students earning their online degrees is increasing everyday.

The people who benefit greatly from the mode of online education are the working class and those who are located at remote locations. Earlier it was very difficult for the working class people to pursue higher education. They either had to take long leaves or quit jobs to take more degrees. Even people located at the far end corners of the world found it difficult to learn courses being offered on the opposite sides of the globe. But now with the emerging technologies and success of online education programs many are finding it convenient and easier. Those at work need not quit their jobs or take leaves. Instead they can do their learning even in their leisure times at office as well, and these online degree programs can assist a person in increasing the career prospects to a great deal.

Studying courses offered by the top level colleges are very easy with online education. There is no travel and other related expenses other than the fees necessary for the enrollment. And the fee structures of online education programs are less when compared to the regular college education. Additionally, unlike the regular college going programs, online education programs are more specialized and concise. It is easy to manage your day to day activities as your time is flexibly divided between an online course and other household chores. You will have projects and assignments but these will be flexible and you will have more time for the submissions, and some courses give you more time to complete the course as well. For example at certain universities you can complete MBA within 3 to 6 years. At a regular course, you will have to stick to the correct scheduling, which might be difficult at times. Many people tend to quit the regular programs due to hectic work schedules.

A drawback of this mode of education will be that you will miss the actual feel of being in a class and learning with lot of other students like you.