Providers Have To Start Putting Excitement Into E-learning
Why did the state of Victoria withdraw an ambitious online training program intended to teach 55,000 teachers about harassment and related issues? Administrators say it was due to be withdrawn at the end of 2002, but the author suggests that its withdrawal after reaching only 68 percent of its intended audience tells a different story. More...

The Bazaar Online Conference System: Athabasca University's Alternative to Proprietary Online Course Delivery Platforms
I had the opportunity last week to tour the entire Bazaar conferencing system described in this article. I like it a lot. What Bazaar is not is a content management system - it is designed to facilitate communication, not information transfer. More...

An Online Engagement Framework for Higher Education
Petrea Redmond, Amanda Heffernan, Lindy Abawi, Alice Brow, Robyn Henderson, online learning, 2018/03/20
This paper (22 page PDF) identifies a set of five major types of online engagement in courses based on a literature search looking at student attitudes, beliefs and actions. The types are: social, cognitive, emotional, behavioural and collaborative engagement. More...

Online, Cheap -- and Elite
Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed, 2018/03/20
This article summarizes an analysis of Georgia Tech’s online master’s in computer science published in Education Next ("a journal focused on school reform") which suggests that the experiment was a success. According to the authors, it attracted students who would not have enrolled in the program and paid the fees -  "working adults who can’t commit to full-time graduate study." But it might be a result that doesn't replicate. More...

E-learning, At a Snail's Pace
Sobering survey results in the U.K. show that e-learning has made its way into only a small percentage of training programs. "The CIPD survey canvasses training managers from 502 UK organisations with more than 25 employees. Only 30.5% - 153 respondents - say they used e-learning for any group of employees within their establishments." The results echo a similar survey conducted by ASTD in the U.S. More...

Read All About It: Online Learning Facing 80% Attrition Rates

We've all heard stories of dramatically high drop-out rates in e-learning. Can they be true? Well yes, but an explanation is in order, argues the author. More...