eLearning solutions

Avoiding Trouble With a Distance Learning Program
Description: Distance learning programs can be an important addition to any college or university. They can boost enrollment, expand the reach of your institution, and can also be a steady stream of new revenue. But there are some mistakes that many colleges and universities make while implementing or maintaining their distance learning programs.
Take the Leap
Description: As a whole, the education industry typically is slow to change, adopt new ideals, or embrace forward, out-of-the-box thinking. We all know that businesses have to change quickly to keep pace with the ever-growing demands of their customers or they face losing market share. Education shouldn’t be viewed any differently. Although it is not commonly popular to refer to students as customers or to view other schools as competition within the realm of higher education, this is the reality regardless of which terms you may choose to embrace.

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Program Approval and Accreditation Consulting:

Beware of Fake Accrediting or Accrediting Agencies
Description: NONE of these accrediting agencies are recognized as college accreditors in the U.S.

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Enrollment Marketing and Admissions:

With Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them
Description: According to the U.S. Department of Education, only 20 percent of young people who begin their higher education at two-year institutions graduate within three years.1 There is a similar pattern in four-year institutions, where about 4 in 10 students receive a degree within six years.2 And these bleak statistics on national college completion rates are averages. In some
institutions, the numbers are even gloomier.
Survive and Thrive During Fall Start Season
Description: Some tips to help enrollment leaders survive and thrive over the next few weeks.
Seven Circumstances that are Shaping the Private Higher Education Marketplace
Description: The Lawlor Group offers an insightful synthesis of marketplace conditions that they predict will have significant impact on student recruitment and enrollment efforts during the coming year.
Overcoming Objections: A Formula for Success
Description: If you are working in Admissions at an academic institution chances are you don’t really think of yourself as a salesperson. Therefore, it is unlikely that you will focus on the finer points of how to overcome objections. Well, here is some news for you Admissions people: if there is an exchange of money or value that is occurring in the course of your job then a transaction has taken place. That makes you a salesperson.
Michigan graduation rates: 25 percent don't finish in four years
Description: A fourth of Michigan's high school students are not graduating in four years, according to data released by the state today using a new formula that is said to be the most accurate picture to date of how many of Michigan's students earn a diploma in four years.

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Hosted Learning Management System:

Clay Shirky's Optimism
Description: Every time a technology brings an increase in freedom to create or consume media the rules of communication shift and we have a period of apparent chaos and decline. Hence, the digital setting alarms people accustomed to the restrictions of the old system, convincing them that the new media will make young people stupid.
The Horizon Report 2010 Edition
Description: The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the New Media Consortium’s Horizon Project, a qualitative research project established in 2002 that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative inquiry on college and university campuses within the next five years.
The Year Ahead in IT
Description: The general fiscal crunch facing higher education has led most technology leaders to assert that double digit percentage cuts to IT budgets.
2009 Horizon Report
Description: Trends in higher education technology over the next 1-5 years.

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ePortfolios for Student Assessment:

National Survey of Student Engagement
Description: Assessing the extent to which they engage in educational practices associated with high levels of learning and development.
Integrating E-Portfolios into Your Assessment Strategy
Description: Trent Batson, executive director of The Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL), stirred some controversy this week with an article entitled "The Testing Straitjacket," in which he advocates for privileging e-portfolios over legacy testing as a primary tool for assessing student learning.
The Testing Straitjacket
Description: The limits of educational reform are determined to some extent by the current legacy structure of testing and evaluation.

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Faculty Recruitment and Training:

Combining Web 2.0 Tools to Create Collaborative and Reflective Learning Spaces
Description: Web 2.0 open content mashups or combinations are explored. Two case studies of recent initial teacher training programmes are reviewed where blogs and wikis were blended to create new virtual learning spaces.
Teaching Tech to the Adjuncts, and Admitting Some IT Mistakes
Description: Professors, to make a broad generalization, are not the keenest adapters of new technology. This article tells how Immaculata University got 366 faculty members--the institution has about 400 total--trained in an online course management system in just a few months.
When They Don't Discuss As We Wish
Description: Do you ever come across instructors who ask: "How can I get my students to participate more, as well as more effectively, in my threaded discussions?" Sometimes just puzzled and other times utterly disappointed, many of these instructors describe how they invite their students to participate in discussions, but get little or no response. Here are some tips to address this issue.

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Education Industry:

With Budget Crunch Hitting IT, Time to Rethink Role?
Description: Colleges' information technology budgets aren't immune to the economic downturn. Some CIOs see opportunity to streamline priorities and recast their mission.
Catholic Colleges Face Unusual Financial Pressures
Description: A report scheduled to be released this week from Moody's Investors Service, "Spotlight on U.S. Catholic Higher Education Sector," focuses on the 55 Catholic institutions Moody's rates, which are among the largest and most affluent of those colleges.
Moody's Predicts Slowdown for Colleges
Description: This year will be a relatively stable one for colleges and universities, says Moody's Investors Service, the bond-rating agency, but storm clouds are gathering for colleges with large amounts of debt, in highly competitive battles for students, or in areas of declining population.

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Online Education:

E-Learning and Its Challenges Increase at Community Colleges
Description: As the number of online-learning students increases at the nation's community colleges, so do the challenges of providing them with good online instruction and providing faculty members with the tools to deliver it. That's the message in the results of a new survey of community colleges.
How Technology Will Reshape Academe After the Economic Crisis
Description: Traditional textbook publishers have held an iron lock on the industry’s model for too long, and universities have been tacitly complicit of the system. In the Web era, however, this oligopolistic business practice is imploding. Indeed, the whole learning process is changing thanks to the Internet.
The Market is Reflecting Online Learning Success
Description: There are many ways to measure the success of a college or university. Enrollment is certainly one. Student retention is another. You can measure the success by the graduation rate or the academic standards. Some would even consider the exposure of one of the sports teams on national television as a barometer to the fortunes of an institution of higher learning.
More 'Open Teaching' Courses, and What They Could Mean for Colleges
Description: Learn about initiatives in "open teaching" courses that allow anyone to take online courses and fully participate in discussions.
American Industry and American Technology: Inverse Proportions
Description: With American manufacturing in decline, more educational opportunities will be very much in demand. There has never been a more important time to start or expand an online educational system.

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Education Affordability:

Are Colleges Worth the Price of Admission?
Description: Tuition charges at both public and private colleges have more than doubled—in real dollars—compared with a generation ago.
A Textbook Case for Low-Cost Books
Description: It is clear to anyone who looks at the state of textbooks today that the system is broken. It does not work well for anyone, but it is especially hard on students, who typically pay $1,000 a year or more for textbooks.
Another Housing Bubble?
Description: Debates about the for-profit education industry and the borrowing and default patterns of their students are generating analogies between the subprime mortgage debacle and students loans.

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General:

Online Learning as a Strategic Asset
Description: The two-part report, "Online Learning as a Strategic Asset," published by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, summarizes the results of the APLU-Sloan National Commission on Online Learning Benchmarking Study conducted in 2008 and 2009 that surveyed 45 public institutions across the U.S.

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