For University Leaders, Change is Good and the Future is Online - Tracie Mauriello, Waterbury Republican American – Profit in cyberspace: the school, which already is Connecticut's largest provider of online degrees, hopes to increase its online enrollment 10-fold, bringing it up to 5,000 students. Across the country, other for-profit schools tend to generate the bulk of their revenue from online programs. Online education has been lucrative for other for-profit schools including the University of Phoenix, which enrolls 213,000 students and generated $832 million in revenue last year, up 57 percent from the year before.

PDF: Implementing eLearning Programmes for Higher Education: A Review of the Literature - Kayte O’Neill, Gurmak Singh, and John O’Donoghue, JITE – This paper is a consideration of the issues associated with the infrastructural aspects, pedagogic considerations and the need to associate the usefulness of technology to enhance the learning experience.

The True Potential and Promise of Online Learning - Jack Wilson and David Gray, Mass High Tech – It has been said that it is easier to move a graveyard than to change the culture in higher education. Today, however, even the most steadfast late adopter of technology in academia will probably admit that e-learning and the Internet have become inextricably rooted in higher education. Perhaps online education’s journey from the edges to the center of higher education has been more of a revelation than a revolution. The University of Massachusetts President and the CEO of Umass Online discuss the coming role of online learning in higher ed.

Encouraging Interaction in Online Classes - Brent Muirhead, Instructional Technology – A major challenge for today’s online instructors involves creating a consistent level of interaction that fosters genuine learning and cultivates a community atmosphere. This will require developing strategies that provide guidance and instruction for individuals and student groups. For instance, the instructor must decide how often to provide specific feedback on student work and dialog comments. 

Each month, we will share selected items that have recently been posted at the Online Learning Update blog, which provides daily summaries of news and journal articles in the field with links to the complete articles. You can always see the latest items, and find many more articles posted seven days a week at the Online Learning Update blog and on the Sloan-C homepage. Until next time, I’ll see you online!
~ray