Engaging Students Online

College staff sent out this suggested reading recently:
Dr. Al-Malood, 10 Ways to Increase Student Engagement Online.

Most of these are pretty good ideas.  My key point is that students should not feel alone out there.  When they submit an assignment or a question, you've got to get back to them asap.  You've got to send out reminder and hint emails periodically (every week).  Students need to feel engaged with the instructor.

Great Article Title on Connected Learning

But little data or elaboration. See, Why Are We Still Learning Alone? Why Connection Is More Important Than Ever #FuturesEd. I  am not sure about this but haven't we always learned alone? Even when I was in an elementary, or junior high, or high school classroom decades ago, I was learning alone, although in the company of classmates. This is an interesting thought, and I'd like to see it developed a bit more.

Data on Community College Transfer Students

What We Know About Transfer, produced by the Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University, as some good information about transfer student success rates, and the data is not good.  While 80% of cc students intend to earn a bachelor degree, only about 25% actually transfer, and only about 17% actually earn a bachelor degree.

Further Info on the MOOC Revolution?

Seems that, as with all educational waves, the devil is in the detail:  how exactly do you creatively and constructively use a MOOC to teach, or supplement the teaching of, a course.  See the article,

Blended MOOCs: Is the Second Time the Charm?

More on the QM Rubric and Who Ows It

Since I am not such a big fan of the QM Rubric process, I was wondering who developed the creature? The Quality Matters Program (QM) is an international organization representing broad inter-institutional collaboration and a shared understanding of online course quality. QM's quality assurance processes have been developed to improve and certify the design of online and blended courses.

There is an an advisory council of 15 (only two of which are actually instructors), and none of the board of directors are instructors. Just what I suspected; that this is not a faculty-driven set of standards, and it sure looks like this idea of online instruction standards has been both institutionalized and corporatized.

Continued Growth in Community College Liberal Arts

Despite all the hand-wringing excessive emphasis on STEM courses, degrees and training, it looks like humanities (probably the social sciences too) courses and degrees continue to hold up well enrollment-wise. See Scott Jaschik, Community College Liberal Arts (20 January 2015).

Digital Assignments: Using Web-Based Tools to Go Beyond Just Writing Papers

My latest presentation was Digital Assignments: Using Web-Based Tools to Go Beyond Just Writing Papers. What I am hoping to do is get more instructors to consider using alternate assignments instead of the tradition read this and write that.