ITC 11 Meet and Greet

Executive meeting with committee members and nonmembers. There's a nice report from Distance Education Survey Results "Trends in eLearning: Tracking the impact of eLearning at Community Colleges".

Interesting results:
Number 1 Challenge reported as "Greatest Challenges for Administrators of Distance Education Programs": "Support staff needed for traning and technical assistance".
Number 2 Challenge "Adequate student services for distance education students"

Blackboard leads percentage of LMS usage at just under 40% followed very closely by WebCT at about 36%. Moodle is at about 10%, then Angel just short of 10% and Desire2Learn just under 5%.

Most difficult classes. "Respondents identified classes they have found to be difficult to offer onoline for various reasons, such as faculty resistance and/or pedagogical challenges...The most difficult classes listed include:"

* Lab-based science
* Speech
* Clinical requirements
* Fine arts
* Nursing
* Math
* Industrial technology
* Foreign language
* Computer hardware

"Typical enrollment cap by class type also remained the same".
27 students for an introductory math class
25 students for an introductory English composition class
30 students for an introductory politcal science class

From report: 60% of the respondents indicated faculty participation in training programs for distance education was mandatory..."
* 70% require more than 8 hours of training

From report: Full-time faculty teach 64% of distance education classes.

From report: Only 28% of the respondents limit the number of online class sections a full-time faculty member can teach each term.

"Completion Rates. Since the inception of online instruction, administrators have dealt with the issue of lower student retention of completion rates than traditional face-to-face instruction...in 2009 administrators reported that the average retention or completion rate for online classes was 72%, compared to 76% percent for traditional face-to-face courses."

From report: 52% of online students are "traditional" (18-25) while 47% are non-traditional (26+)

BARRY DAHL'S 6 ITEMS THAT ARE COMING OUR WAY:
Game-based learning
Mobile Devices for Learning
Gesture-based computing
e-textbooks
Augmented Reality
Learning Analytics

Don't Get Run OVer By
* Off-loading IT services
* Netflix bandwidth issues
* Open Education Resources
* Student communications not via email (From another report 60% of students do not use email)

"The LMS we're looking for may not be an LMS"