2012 Distance Education Survey Results Trends in eLearning: Tracking the Impact of eLearning at Community CollegesApril 2013, Instructional Technology Council In Focus: The Year in Review 2013: The Great Recession Continues Recovery from the Great Recession has been slow and elusive. Most campus administrators have survived the worst of the recession, with no further cuts made to their department funding levels, but they have only experienced meager attempts to increase budget allocations. In its recent survey report, the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) noted that, “although enrollment stabilized in 2012, the reduction in state and local support combined with an increase in inflation contributed to a nine percent decrease in state and local support per student in constant dollars from 2011. Per student support in 2012 is $5,896, the lowest level in the 25 years.” Participants in this ITC survey reported that distance education enrollments grew by 6.52 percent from fall 2011 to fall 2012.
Fried Outlines Hope for Cheap, High-Quality College Degree Among the voices raised in panic at growing college tuition that threatens to price half the country out of a college education, there remains at least one that’s calm and optimistic. Vance H. Fried, who wrote a paper outlining how by the year 2020 colleges could run entire residential programs all without charging more than $8,000 in tuition, sees hope. Fried is far from a crank. He’s a professor of entrepreneurship at Oklahoma State University and his newest paper – College 2020 – is only the latest salvo in a fight to convince people that matter that attending college need not be ruinously expense. He feels that the higher education system in this country is ossified due the fact that it has not had to deal with any kind of competitive pressure in decades. Some commentators worry that tuition-dependent colleges will have to go out of business because they can’t control their costs and low-priced suppliers are going to take away their students.
Betrayed - Why Public Education Is Failing Competency Works Report: Federal Rules Impede Competency-Based Learning Big Ideas Culture Teaching Strategies Getty Images Competency-based learning, which allows students to progress at their own pace after they’ve shown mastery of a subject, rather than by their age, is quickly gaining momentum. Already, a few states like New Hampshire, Maine, and Oregon are moving towards implementing competency-based learning models throughout the entire state. KnowledgeWorks, an organization that supports three education-focused initiatives — New Tech Network, EDWorks and Strive — recently released a report highlighting the pain points between federal policy and a competency-based system. “The greatest conflict stems from disconnect with the work on the ground and federal accountability and assessment systems,” the report states. Time is the biggest point of contention between the two systems. With the competency models, students take summative assessments at various times throughout the year. Another big difference between the two systems is what gets tested. Related
Resources | Toolkit for Effective Data Use | SDP The SDP Toolkit for Effective Data Use is a resource guide for education agency analysts who collect and analyze data on student achievement. Completing the toolkit produces a set of basic, yet essential, human capital and college-going analyses that every education agency should have as a foundation to inform strategic management and policy decisions. The human capital edition* of the toolkit will give users insight into teacher recruitment, placement, evaluation, development, and retention. The college-going edition provides analytics for for on-time graduation trends, postsecondary enrollment, and persistence. The toolkit also provides information about the application of general business rules for defining key data elements. The SDP Toolkit includes: *The human capital edition of the toolkit is a beta version, still currently being tested and updated. ACCESS THE TOOLKIT for free by signing up for an activation code with your email.
Re-Considering Educational Analytics to Measure Student Success In business, there’s always a big push towards using analytics to measure the success of different projects and campaigns. In higher education, student progress has traditionally been measured in grades and credit hours. With student loans and the growing costs of higher education consistently discussed as hot button issues, some colleges are considering new approaches to measuring student success. College administrations across the country are concerned with how to best help students afford to attend and attain a degree. A few have embraced competency-based learning as one solution. What is competency-based learning? The traditional structure of higher education ties success, at least in part, to regular physical attendance in the classes relevant to your field of study. Benefits of competency-based learning In practice, this can save students and institutions time and money. Is competency-based learning right for your institution? It depends on the goals of the college and its students.
Infographics 2015 YFCY Infographic 2015 DLE Infographic 2015 CSS Infographic 2014 TFS Infographic 2014 HERI Faculty 2014 CSS Infographic 2014 YFCY Infographic 2013 TFS Infographic 2012 YFCY Infographic 2012 DLE Infographic 2010 FAC Infographic Customizable Infographics - Compare your own survey results 2012 YFCY Infographic
Social Networks Research in Higher Education We review the literature on social networks research in higher education from an analytic and an empirical perspective. Analytically, we find a bifurcated literature: a faculty-focused side explores the mechanisms of collaborative network formation and its influence on productivity, while a separate, student-focused side investigates mechanisms leading to interracial connections and the peer influence of dorm-mates on student outcomes. Empirically, we document the several social science fields that generate much of the work in this area. While the number of papers in this area has grown, there is no recognizable research community.
Social Networks, the Next Educational Tool? ORLANDO -- At last year's Educause conference, in Seattle, educators pondered what to do about students' technology habits. Should they try to change them? Accept that they're here to stay? Try to co-opt them? A lot can change in a year. Many colleges seem to have moved on from the question of whether to follow students' lead on technologies they prefer, from Web-based e-mail to Facebook to text messaging. A study conducted this year at Arizona State University sought to take a closer look at first-year students' use of social networks, mainly Facebook and MySpace. The study was presented at this year's Educause conference here in Orlando, to which information technology specialists, higher education officials and technology companies have flocked for the annual ritual of sizing up each other's capabilities, taking stock of the industry and meeting colleagues new and old. It's still unclear how well students' technology habits translate directly to teaching and learning, said Laura C.