Desire2Blog

Part one examined the confusion about what is and what isn't a traditional classroom course. Part two will take a look at what is a hybrid or blended course. Part three (coming soon) will look at the new ideas about what is an online course. Within MnSCU, media code 09 has been used for many years to represent those courses that fall into the following description: 1. Course blends online and face-to-face delivery. 2. Some of the content is delivered online. 3. More than two class sessions face-to-face. 4. Reduced classroom seat time. 5. Also know as "web-enhanced." One reason for differentiating between an online course and a blended course is the special $5 per credit Minnesota Online fee. If a course is coded as an online course it will include a $5 per credit surcharge that is used to partially fund the budget for Minnesota Online. This budget is used to pay for the IMS (D2L) licensing and support costs, a state-wide D2L help desk (which we don't use at my school...

Apparently we've had a communication problem within Minnesota Online . We're a couple 13, 14 years (copyright the Common Man, Dan Cole) into this thing called online learning, and now we are being told that we need to be much more specific about what we mean when we say that we are offering online courses, and also hybrid and traditional face-to-face courses for that matter as well. The big question right now appears to be: "Just what exactly is an online course?" Along with that question, you also get to decide what is an on-ground class and what is a hybrid/blended course. Let the fun begin. This will be the first post of 2 or 3 in which I will try to explain my position regarding the proposed changes to the ways that we define the delivery method of various types of courses. In MnSCU, we attach something known as a media code to every class that is entered into the student records/registration system. I have previously posted about some of the confusion that surr...

News broke on Tuesday afternoon (12/15) that Desire2Learn and Blackbored (Blackborg, Blackbeard, BlackAngel, Dr. Evil, etc. - a.k.a. Blackboard) have reached an agreement to end their 3+ year patent dispute. Very little info has been released about the deal that was reached, and it appears as if there won't be a great deal of additional info coming any time soon. The whole "we're ready to move on" thing doesn't strike me quite right. These are the top 5 questions (or so) that I have (for today, anyway). Doesn't this move by D2L signal the possibility that there is some validity in Blackboard's lousy "Alcorn" patent? By walking away from this fight aren't we currently left with a patent that is no longer being vigorously challenged? I assume that the USPTO re-examination will proceed with or without this settlement, but they move as slow as molasses and you never know what their final ruling might be. At the current time, doesn't Blackbo...

Don't let all the news about budget cuts and layoffs scare you away. Here at Lake Superior College we are hiring adjunct faculty for as much as $545,000 annually. Here's the catch. You won't earn all that because it is only a part-time job (so you might earn 1/2 of the $545K if you teach half-time) and it clearly states that there are no benefits included with this position. (Click to view enlarged photo) A hat tip to @bergjj for the heads up on this one.

During a recent 2-day eLearning Quality Workshop in North Dakota we again had a brief discussion about student evaluations for online courses. Part of the discussion centered on the overall validity of student responses on course evals and part of it centered on the evaluation surveys themselves; particularly how long should they be and how can you get good response rates on a voluntary submission basis. (Flickr CC photo by kodomut ) A few years ago we (Lake Superior College) redesigned our end-of-course survey rather dramatically, from 32 questions to 10. We were hoping that the response rate would go up significantly if the students could see at a glance that the survey would only take a couple of minutes to complete. The response rate did go up, but only by a few percentage points and it still is less than 20% overall for all online courses combined. Near the end of each term, we set up separate course shells within D2L for each online course and then enroll all the students but no...

This new video (Oct. 23, '09) about net neutrality is very well done. Progress appears to have been made to convince the U.S. Congress to NOT screw up our (short, but important) tradition of network neutrality. If you are not yet familiar with this issue, this video would be a good starting place. Just a few other quotes about the importance of net neutrality: "Net neutrality is fundamentally important to allowing universities fulfill their educational mission." ( Educause ) "A simple principle that means internet providers, such as cable and phone companies, should not block or discriminate against legal content on the web." ( CommonDreams.org ) "the fundamental concern is that the provider of broadband service not be able to take advantage of that to act in an anticompetitive fashion against others that are trying to provide competitive applications using the same broadband facilities." ( Google's Vint Cerf ) All is not perfectly rosy just yet....

Yesterday I served as moderator for two hours for an online discussion forum about President Obama’s American Graduation Initiative The "Jam" was organized by the Knowledge in the Public Interest , the Brookings Institution , the Education Commission of the States , and Jobs for the Future . Community college educators from all around the country joined in the conversation. My topic was one of six different discussions and was titled "Accessing Online Education: Funding to Create Free, Web-based Courses." Plan is for $500 Million ($50M each year for 10 years) H.R. Bill 3221 should be voted on this week. Senate bill in earlier stages. UPDATE: 3221 passed right before I posted this . Senate bill still coming.) Here's the text from Obama’s speech in July about the proposal to “…build a new virtual infrastructure to complement the education and training community colleges can offer. So we're going to support the creation of a new online, open-source clearinghou...