Knol screenshot, courtesy of Wikipedia

Google’s recently-acquired reference site, Knol, entered into public beta on 23 July. The site is similar to Wikipedia in that it relies entirely on user-submitted content, but the similarities end there. Instead of encouraging collaboration between users, Knol emphasizes individual authorship, and encourages users to verify that their username is their legal name via credit card or phone. As such, each entry is controlled by a single person, although other users may suggest edits. Knol aims to incentivize contribution by paying authors a share of the ad revenue generated by their content.

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Tags: Learning Technologies, Online Education by editor
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A list featuring the names of over 9,000 degree mill “graduates” was released today by the Spokane, WA Spokesman-Review. The list, which the Justice Department refused to release, was apparently leaked to the paper. Upon researching the names on the list, the paper found several shocking clients: a CIA contractor and an employee of the National Security Agency (both with top-secret clearance), an employee of a nuclear power plant, a NASA engineer, two US Marshals, a senior White House staffer, Army officers, and numerous police officers and municipal employees. The eight people who set up and ran the degree mill have been indicted and convicted of federal offenses, and ringleader (and high-school drop out) Dixie Ellen Randock faces three years in prison.

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Tags: Non-Traditional Students, Online Education by editor
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European researchers participating in the European Learning Grid Infrastructure (ELeGI) project recently completed an online learning platform that automatically responds to individual students’ learning styles as well as teacher input. The ELeGI promises to revolutionize online pedagogy by rendering the online learning platform fluid: instead of adapting to the platform, teachers have the platform adapt to them.

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Tags: Learning Technologies, Online Education by editor
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The actual driving portion of driver’s education courses remains offline, for obvious reasons.

One of America’s most enduring but least celebrated institutions of “higher” learning is the driving school. Affectionately referred to by ennui-filled teenagers as “driver’s ed,” the educational experience generally consists of dozens of hours of lectures and a couple behind the wheel lessons with a chain-smoking instructor. It is no surprise then that the entrepreneurs at DriversEd.com have taken this cherished institution into cyber-space, and have even received DMV accreditation in several states.

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Tags: Non-Traditional Students, Online Education by editor
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John McCain is thus far the sole candidate who has discussed online education.

As the presidential campaign nears a fever pitch, candidates have been expanding, revising, and flip-flopping their positions at an ever increasing pace. In fact, one would be hard-pressed to find a subject upon which either candidate has not opined. Yet, the campaign discussion surrounding online education is barely a whisper—surprising neglect for a topic that directly affects millions of Americans. Hit the jump for our assessment of both candidates’ positions.

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Tags: Online Education by editor
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Blackboard + open source = future?

The course management behemoth Blackboard has recently announced a partnership with the open-source course manager Sakai at Syracuse University. While the move is unlikely to inspire a great deal of confidence from the open source community—the partnership is at only one of thousands of Blackboard-using schools—it is a step in the right direction. Given the abundance of competent coders among students and faculty on most college campuses, it would make sense for universities to adopt open source course management software en masse. The implication for online schools is the same—each online program has its own specific needs in terms of how students are interacting or submitting course materials: students in a programming course require a different user experience than art students. (Click here for the full story over at Inside Higher Education)

Tags: Learning Technologies, Online Education by editor
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Old school.

Anyone who has attended an institution of higher learning in the last several decades can attest to the astronomically high cost of textbooks. Students frustrated by the seemingly unjustifiably high price of course materials can take solace in the rising popularity of “open textbooks.” These books contain all the same content as their “closed” counterparts, with one important difference—they are free. While some online schools have been using free or low cost ebooks in the place of traditional textbooks for several years, the expansion of this trend to brick-and-mortar institutions is encouraging. Once again, technology first adopted by online schools is spreading to the mainstream. (Story via Online Learning Update)

Tags: Learning Technologies, Non-Traditional Students, Online Education by editor
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Are online degrees more acceptable today than they were five years ago?

The results of a recent poll conducted by career statisticians Vault, Inc. maligning the quality of online education have been widely publicized in the last week. But are the results as significant as many publications have claimed they are? Probably not. Moreover, most reports (in CNN Money and Yahoo Finance) gloss over the finding that does point to improving attitudes toward online degrees—83% of respondents stated that online degrees are more acceptable today than they were five years ago.

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Tags: Career Education, Online Education by editor
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One of the biggest barriers to creating an online learning environment identical in experience to traditional education is test proctoring. A provision in a bill expected to pass before Congress by the fall aims to resolve this issue by mandating that universities use biometric technologies to proctor online tests.

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Tags: Learning Technologies, Online Education by editor
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A deleted scene from the 2007 film I Am Legend depicts Robert Neville (Will Smith) attending a University of Phoenix course on epidemiology prior to saving the human race from extinction

According to a July 10 article in Science Daily, online courses taken by nursing and healthcare staff could prove essential in combating an epidemic outbreak. While the article’s headline is misleading–it’s actually about how an online course helped hospital staff learn to contain the risk of hospital-acquired infection–online tutorials could in fact be key to containing a real-life epidemic. The rapid distribution of information on online learning platforms makes it easy for a central authority to respond to a crisis by sending out an informational bulletin.

Tags: Non-Traditional Students, Online Education by editor
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