November 17, 2008

Good Morning Developers,

Some very interesting news articles came out over the past week and they contain information that will help you to keep current with where online education is in the spectrum of higher education.

Here are the links to the articles:
College life in wireless age: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/education/story/756174.html
As economy wavers, online enrollments climb: http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/11/13/sloan

The first article about college life in the wireless age doesn't specifically relate to taking courses in the online environment, but it is important because it helps us to understand the lives of our students and what our competition is doing in terms of everyday campus life. Web based social networks are changing the face of our interactions with each other and these types of changes will inevitably carry over into online education. These types of changes tell us that when we design online courses it is important to keep up with the changing face of communication. Students are used to interacting over the web and our assignments, discussion boards, and group projects are just a few ways that we can guide them toward that type of interaction in our courses.

The second article confirms that online education isn't going anywhere and is in fact growing at an unpredicted pace! Every year we have double-digit growth in online education and this growth might continue due to the stagnating economy. When people don't have jobs, they go back to school. Keep this in mind as you are creating your courses. It is likely that your courses will be seen by hundreds or thousands of students. The responsibility to give these students a high level of education rests in your hands and in your course design. Have fun with it! Keep your course design fresh and interesting to keep the students engaged. Remember, when people interact with each other they are likely to view their experience as a more positive one.

Have a great week!