By Sally McRorie. Many proponents of improved innovation and accountability in higher education bang the drum loudly when it comes to the adoption of performance-based funding. However, the short-term factors measured by many funding mechanisms may lead to unforeseen changes that diminish the diversity of public higher education. More...
01 mars 2016
Transforming Performance-Based Funding to Celebrate Institutional Differences
The Seven Most Important Changes Community Colleges Can Make To Close California’s Skills Gap
By Van Ton-Quinlivan. The skills gap is the biggest hurdle to economic prosperity for unemployed individuals across the United States, but there are some very specific changes two-year colleges could make to help minimize the gap and improve completion and employment rates in their regions. More...
Five Reasons To Expand Your Higher Ed Online Marketing Beyond Google Paid Search
By Johnna Weary. As competition and revenue goals in the higher ed market continue to escalate, it becomes increasingly important to find cost-effective ways of getting your programs in front of the right people. The non-traditional student, in particular, is doing more research and taking more time to decide, demonstrated by later and later enrollments each year in both credit and non-credit programs. More...
Lessons from an International e-Learning Project
This paper offers a critical examination of an e-learning project in the context of a Distance Education training program delivered to teacher trainers in Rwanda. In examining the successes and failures of the project, it uses a framework based on ideas promulgated by Moore (1995) and strives to provide guidance and reference for future projects in this field. More...
Same Size Doesn't Fit All: Insights from research on listening skills at the University of the South Pacific (USP)
Listening skills research has tended to focus on strategy use in classrooms and on theory and practice of second language (L2) teachers. This study examined the teachers’ and learners’ perceptions of listening skills in non-classroom learning situations. Five (n = 5) study skills teachers and 19 former learners in a distance study skills course at the University of the South Pacific (USP) were interviewed for this study. More...
Re-organizing Universities for the Information Age
University education is still generally conducted within pre-Industrial Age organizational structures. As a result of their inability to evolve the predominant cohort-based classroom structure to more cost-effectively meet the aspirations of burgeoning worldwide populations for higher education, universities may see substantial organizational changes imposed on them over the next decades by external forces. More...
Identifying Effective Pedagogical Approaches for Online Workplace Training: A case study of the South African wood products
This study investigated appropriate pedagogical techniques for workplace e-learning programs in the South African wood products (furniture) manufacturing sector. The study found that learners responded favourably to constructivist teaching approaches, such as asynchronous discussions, open-ended task-based activities, and assignments incorporating authentic, real-world examples. More...
The Emergence of Open-Source Software in North America
Unlike conventional models of software development, the open source model is based on the collaborative efforts of users who are also co-developers of the software. Interest in open source software has grown exponentially in recent years. More...
OOPS, Turning MIT Opencourseware into Chinese: An analysis of a community of practice of global translators
An all-volunteer organization called the Opensource Opencourseware Prototype System (OOPS), headquartered in Taiwan, was initially designed to translate open source materials from MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) site into Chinese. More...
Access to Communication for Deaf, Hard-of-Hearing and ESL Students in Blended Learning Courses
In an effort to better understand student perceptions of communication in blended (online and traditional) learning courses, a 22 item questionnaire was developed and sent to all students registered for these courses at a large technology-focused college during three quarters of instruction. More...
