Oldie, but Goodie

Sometimes we run across information that is old for everyone else, but new for us. That's the case with this excellent article from the Online Journal of Distance Learning at West Georgia. This is a 2003 document but it fascinates me how relevant, accurate, and eerily predictive the 32 trends are/were.

Thirty-two Trends Affecting Distance Education: An Informed Foundation for Strategic Plannning

"Recent issues in this journal and other prominent distance-learning journals have established the need for administrators to be informed and prepared with strategic plans equal to foreseeable challenges. This article provides decision makers with 32 trends that affect distance learning and thus enable them to plan accordingly. The trends are organized into categories as they pertain to students and enrollment, faculty members, academics, technology, the economy, and distance learning. All the trends were identified during an extensive review of current literature in the field."

DLA Conference - UWG

Blogging from the DLA conference in Georgia:

DLA Conference - UWG: "DLA symposiums are specifically designed for those involved or interested in the administration, management, planning, and evaluation of distance learning programs."

Interesting Sessions....
Chris Cook's V-Brick session on how his company has evolved from point to point video appliances to a web-based service and product combination. www.vbrick.com

Ken Pisel's military background made for an interesting presentation on the required orderliness of strategic planning. His ingredients/recipe/chef analogy makes some sense. Anyone can collect ingredients...some people can follow recipes, but chefs master both by experience.

Melanie Clay's discussion of the new e-tuition policies at UWG. Really just distance learning fees, but the fee split and planning process discussion hit home.

Justin Johansen and colleagues led a small, but spirited and thorough discussion of the BYU indepedent studies, self-supporting fee structures and how it was achieved in the overall context of academic department needs and demands. Not applicable to most public universities but the overall formulas BYU came up with for splitting the development and delivery of courses is instructive.

Also of interest...Decade Consulting's updated course evaluation product for evaluating academic courses.

Testing Scribefire in Firefox 3 - A Blogging Tool

ScribeFire: Fire up your blogging

ScribeFire is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser that integrates with your browser to let you easily post to your blog: you can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, and post to your blog.

Early testing of the features on this tool bring good results....

Ning in Education

Ning continues to explode onto the scene with more networks, specific focuses, and relevant content.

View my page on Ning in Education

Student Email and the Customer Service Demand

A very accurate (at least from my own online teaching experience) and timely article from Denise Knight and Noralyn Masselink about student demands. I think anyone who teaches online could probably write a similar essay, but congratulations to the authors for stating it well. Here is a small selection, but please take the time to read the entire article...especially the netiquette tips that can be used by faculty and shared with students.

eLearn: Feature Article: "Ever since email exploded onto the scene in the early 1990s, it has become a fast, popular, and convenient medium for communication between college students and their professors. Some would argue that it has become too convenient. Students today seem to rely less on face-to-face meetings or phone calls with their instructors and more on electronic mail, which they use to challenge grades, explain absences, deliver unsolicited paper drafts, and announce their intention to 'drop by' outside of office hours, assuming that we will either be available or shift our schedules to accommodate their needs. Today's students view themselves as customers in a consumer culture who are entitled to answers and information 24 hours a day. Do things really have to be this way?"

Examples of the suggestions:
Don't email your professor to ask whether they will excuse a particular absence.
Don't email your professor to ask whether they will excuse a particular absence.
Don't expect an immediate response to your email.
You are what you email.
Use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

These are simply a few of the excellent suggestions. For more information, check out

"i dont mean too bother u but": Student Email and a Call for Netiquette, By Denise D. Knight and Noralyn Masselink, State University of New York College at Cortland