Online Education Changes (Handout)
November 23, 2010
According to the Sloan Consortium, Online Education is one of the most rapidly expanding sectors in education with a growth of 17% in 2008 compared to the 1.2% growth for higher education in general in the United States. Accounting for only 9.6% of post-secondary education enrollment in 2002, online education in the United States accounted for 25.3% of enrollment by the fall of 2008. Many universities are increasingly using these technologies to reduce costs, reach a broader audience, and increase the quality of their distance education program. Online education can increase the distribution of educational material, particularly to individuals living in rural areas.
The African Virtual University is one of the best examples of an accredited university with an emphasis on development. The Mexican Government has also used online education to offer a free education to Mexican immigrants in the United States and Canada (http://www.conevyt.org.mx/). While online education courses currently cost about the same as an average credit physically taken at the institution, other initiatives such as StraighterLine are offering transferable courses for as low $99 dollars. Recently, various initiatives have experimented with personal learning environments or PLEs. What is the difference between a PLE and a Learning Management System (LMS)? Will online education help developing countries increase access to a quality education for a larger percentage of the population?
MOOC – Massive Online Open Community
http://openeducationnews.org/2008/07/30/mooc-massive-open-online-course/
Africa Virtual University – http://www.avu.org/
Straighterline (99 dollars per month) – http://www.straighterline.com/
PLE vs. LMS
– http://terrya.edublogs.org/2006/01/09/ples-versus-lms-are-ples-ready-for-prime-time/
Sloan Consortium Reports – http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/index.asp
