iNACOL Webinar 5/21: Examining Educational Practices of Online Teachers for Effectiveness and Student Success

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iNACOL Webinar Examines Educational Practices of Online Teachers for Effectiveness and Student Success The International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) will present a webinar on Tuesday, May 21, 2013 from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET exploring the educational practices of K-12 online teachers for effectiveness and success in critical need Algebra I and Biology classes. The webinar, part of iNACOL’s monthly Research in Review presentation series, will feature Drs. Bonnie Swan and Michael Hynes of the University of Central Florida, and Beth Miller of Florida Virtual School. iNACOL President Susan Patrick said, “Online or in a classroom, a student’s teacher has greater impact on their learning than any other factor. This research examines the relationship between educational practices of online teachers, methods and course completion rates. This research provides an important look at the correlation between these elements for teaching courses critical to a student’s success.” The researchers aim to add to the existing knowledge to address and examine the educational practices and backgrounds for the teacher workforce in a large virtual school, and how these factors relate to student satisfaction and course completion. This webinar is free, but please register at to receive details and login confirmation by email. Speakers: Dr. Bonnie Swan, Director/Evaluator, Program Evaluation and Educational Research Group (PEER), College of Education, University of Central Florida Dr. Michael Hynes, Professor and Director for our School of Teaching, Learning, and Leadership, College of Education, University of Central Florida Beth Miller, Senior Manager, Professional Learning, Florida Virtual School You can find more information about this and other iNACOL webinars HERE. To ensure that you receive login instructions on the morning of the webinar, please add (info@inacol.org) to your safe sender list. Sincerely, Rob Darrow, Ed.D. Director of Member Services International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL)

This email was sent to: mkbarbour@gmail.com This email was sent by: North American Council for Online Learning dba International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) 1934 Old Gallows Road, Suite 350, Vienna, VA, 22182-4040, United States

Does This Apply To Cyber Charter Schools Too?

Last week I saw an article entitled Marketing and For-Profit Schools: Conflict of Interest? come across my electronic desk (through Twitter I think).

According to some accounts, for-profit colleges spend as much money on marketing as they do on instruction—sometimes more. Proponents of restrictions generally hope that the money saved on recruitment and marketing could be reinvested in school infrastructure, curriculum, programs, and instructors.

I don’t know if the figures hold true for for-profit corporations that operate in the K-12 environment, but I do know that cyber charter companies spend significant amounts of money on advertizing (while most supplemental statewides and district-based programs spend almost no money on advertizing).

Given that the educational management organizations (EMOs) that operate charter schools, both brick-and-mortar and cyber charter schools, often rely upon aggressive advertizing to increase enrollment numbers (which increases funding – i.e., profits – through an increase in Full-time equivalents [FTEs]).  At the same time, traditional public schools spent nothing or almost nothing on advertizing.  Is this a conflict of interest?

Distance-Educator.com e-Newsletter – 5/20/13

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FEATURED ARTICLE Planning and Managing Distance Education Systems: Building the Model Dr. Farhad (Fred) Saba Founder and Editor, Distance-Educator.com In this series of articles, I presented a hierarchical model of distance education consisting of seven interrelated nested systems levels. These systems have been present in most distance education organizations that I observed, or planned and built over the past 30 years. In the previous weeks, I discussed Hardware, Software, Telecommunications, Instructional, Educational, Societal and Global Systems Levels. Last week I started to explain the process of system modeling so that you could start the planning process for your organization. I hope that conducting the environmental scan as presented in a previous article has given you a better appreciation of the components of the technology-based educational programs in your organization and the interrelationships among such components. But before I went any further on the process of modeling itself, I explained certain important concepts in system methodology in this article and showed how these principles can be applied in this article titled Planning and Managing Distance Education Systems: Applying system dynamics. Below, you will see an example in systems modeling in detail. RESEARCH-BASED ARTICLES OF THE WEEK Access the complete current issue of the journal of the Asian Association of Open Universities Designing an online learning environment on Open Educational Resources for science education Shironica Karunanayaka, Chandana Fernando and Vajira de Silva Personalised system of instruction: The ODL way Prakash Arumugam Comparative study on the usage of an online plagiarism-detection service when presenting distance learning courses Loo Choo Hong and Tung Lai Cheng Floundering among adult learners in classrooms: Fact or fallacy? Nantha Kumar Subramaniam and Maheswari Kandasamy Determinants of students’ loyalty at Universitas Terbuka Maximus Gorky Sembiring The establishment of academic credit accumulation and transfer system: A case study of Shanghai Academic Credit Transfer and Accumulation Bank for Lifelong Education Huikang Li, Yaoting Sun, Min Yang and Zhihui Wei Faculty: A success factor in improving quality of distance learning Muhammad Zaheer Supportive role of the“CBCI Chair” at IGNOU in ODL programme development Gracious Thomas Theoretical and practical dilemma of distance learning: The case of Universitas Terbuka Indonesia Hanif Nurcholis and Ace Sriati Rachman Addressing the issues of low student enrollment: The case of the Kandy Regional Centre of the Open University of Sri Lanka P.S.D. Aluwihare and R. Manoshika Independent learning skill, competence and job performance of graduates of Universitas Terbuka: Perceptions of graduates and supervisors Dewi Juliah Ratnaningsih Unlocking Open Educational Resources (OERs) Interaction Data Each time a teacher or a learner interacts with an Open Educational Resource (OER), these interactions produce data. This “interaction data” includes “artifact data” routinely captured during any online interaction by Web server logs (e.g., users’ browsers, users’ IP addresses) and “social data” created during Web 2.0-style interactions with resources (e.g., tags, comments, ratings, favorites). Interaction data can serve a number of purposes in a period of increased interest worldwide in OERs quality and uptake. First, interaction data is a valuable source of analytics about OERs and typical audience profiles. Second, combined with metadata, interaction data can enhance searching, ranking, and recommendations of learning resources. However, obtaining this data is not always easy since OERs, in particular, are generally dispersed among different systems where the interactions between resources and their users take place. This paper describes approaches to unlocking, collecting and aggregating this interaction data. D-Lib Mabaziine Up and Away: Open Access in Portugal Portugal stands out among nations that have embraced open access to scholarly communication because of its early adoption of institutional policies, creation of a network of repositories, and effective system of governance. And, nonprofit international publishing initiatives play an important role in opening up entire runs of Portuguese academic journals. EDUCAUSE Review Online Introducing blended learning: An experience of uncertainty for students in the United Arab Emirates The cultural dimension of Uncertainty Avoidance is analysed in this study of an introduction to blended learning for international students. Content analysis was conducted on the survey narratives collected from three cohorts of management undergraduates in the United Arab Emirates. Interpretation of certainty with blended learning was found in: student skills with technology; student acknowledgement of course organisation; and student appreciation of online feedback. Uncertainty with the introduction of blended learning was found: when membership was assigned for group work, higher quality research methods were introduced; where course structure lacked detail, increased time was required for new and different online activities. These international students, from countries with a high score on Uncertainty Avoidance, exhibited that dimension when introduced to blended learning. The implications of these findings are discussed, and strategies suggested for introducing blended learning to international students. The limitations of the study are considered, and a direction for future research is suggested. This is the first study on undergraduates in the Middle East for the effects of a cultural dimension when introducing blended learning. The findings increase the body of knowledge that relates to learning technology in the international business classroom. Research in Learning Technology IN THE NEWS Embrace Moocs or face decline, warns v-c “It’s Mooc or die”, a university vice-chancellor has said, claiming that institutions must embrace the massive open online course movement and adapt their teaching methods or face a tough future. Times Higher Education Massive (But Not Open) The Georgia Institute of Technology plans to offer a $7,000 online master’s degree to 10,000 new students over the next three years without hiring much more than a handful of new instructors. Inside Higher Education Kids coding in the cloud One of the most popular online destinations on the MIT network is not a website for scientists, engineers or college students, but an online community where kids learn to code. MIT Media Lab Farhad (Fred) Saba, Ph. D. Founder and Editor Distance-Educator.com

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Journal of Open, Flexible and Distance Learning – Special Issue: Primary And Secondary Distance Education : Expanding The Knowledge Base In The Schools Sector

Just wanted to announce the publication of this special issue focused on K-12 online learning in New Zealand.  Over the course of the week, I will post an individual entry about each of these articles.

Journal of Open, Flexible and Distance Learning

The Journal of Open, Flexible and Distance Learning is a refereed journal published annually by the New Zealand Association for Open, Flexible and Distance Learning (DEANZ). It publishes articles from around the world relating to primary research investigations, literature reviews, the application of distance education innovations, and the experiences of teaching at a distance. Theoretical and empirically based research articles, research notes, reports and case studies of practice, and reviews by or of interest to those involved in distance education and open learning are invited for submission.

The Journal of Flexible, Open and Distance Learning is the journal of the New Zealand Association for Open, Flexible and Distance Learning (DEANZ, www.deanz.org.nz).
ISSN: Print 1179-7665; Online 1179-7673.

Vol 17, No 1 (2013): JOFDL Special Issue – Primary and Secondary Distance Education: Expanding the knowledge base in the schools sector

This issue of JOFDL seeks to advance understanding of distance education in the schools sector in New Zealand, Australia and other Pacifica countries. Contributors focus on some aspect of distance education in the schools sector.

Table of Contents

Special issue – Primary and Secondary Education

Editorial Introduction	PDF
Michael K Barbour, Keryn Pratt	i-ii

OtagoNet: One region’s model for virtual schooling	PDF
Keryn Pratt, Ken Pullar	1-11

The FarNet journey: Effective teaching strategies for engaging Māori students on the Virtual Learning Network	PDF
Michael K Barbour	12-23

A case study of blended teaching and learning in a New Zealand secondary school, using an ecological framework	PDF
Pinelopi Zaka	24-40

Book Review – eLearnings: Implementing a national strategy for ICT in education, 1998-2010	PDF
Darren Sudlow	41-43

Book Review – Making the move to K–12 online teaching: Research-based strategies and practices	PDF
David Adelstein	44-45

Interview with Eddie Reisch	PDF
Hazel Owen	46-55

Allied Online High School Blog

From Saturday’s inbox…

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Cornell Notes Makes Online Learning Easy

Posted: 17 May 2013 11:05 AM PDT

There are many different ways to take notes, but not all of those methods are well suited for online learning.  One particular method that works well is the Cornell Note method. This technique was first developed by–you guessed it–Cornell University.  However, it is not just for college students. It is widely used today for many purposes, at many grade levels, and now in many different learning environments.

Taking notes using the Cornell Note taking method is easy. You divide your paper or document into sections so that you can write down important terms on the left, give a brief explanation or example of the right, and then summarize the content at the bottom.  There are several websites that explain the different variations of this useful technique and some also provide handy online templates.

• The Learning Toolbox on Cornell Notes
• Cornell Notes PDF Generator

And here’s a simple video explaining the process:

What are you waiting for? Give this method a try today and see if it improves your concept mastery and grades!

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