Online: Trending Now

Unique biweekly insights and news review from Ray Schroeder, Senior Fellow at UPCEA.

A Visit From the Risk Management Office

March 21, 2019

How can we be sure we are identifying the most important risks in our changing field and are prepared to mitigate their potential impact? I recently visited with a representative from the University of Illinois’s Enterprise Risk Management unit. The philosophy of the risk unit is that the people closest to a risk are best…

The Maturing MOOC

March 15, 2019

Online courses are changing — sometimes less open, sometimes less massive — but they’re still relevant. In the summer of 2011 we produced eduMOOC — a constructivist massive open online course about online learning with the help of a small group of talented and expert professionals at the University of Illinois Springfield as well as colleagues around…

Georgia Tech Is Creating the Next in Education

March 1, 2019

With its online master’s in computer science and its recent commitment to a lifetime of education for its students, Georgia Tech challenges MIT as most innovative university. Over the decades, I have always considered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to be the leader in innovation in higher education. Ever since its open courseware initiative was…

The Promise of Personalized Learning, Enabled by AI

February 15, 2019

A centuries-old challenge for teachers has been how to adapt learning materials and presentations to meet the varied backgrounds and abilities of students. Emerging technologies, Ray Schroeder writes, can help meet students where they are and customize learning for them. From introductory gen-ed classes to advanced graduate seminars, wherever classes online or on campus include…

Are You Selling Day-Old Doughnuts?

January 31, 2019

Every year our degrees “expire” in relevancy and timeliness if we don’t refresh each class with an eye to the future, Ray Schroeder argues. We all know the tech expectations of new hires have changed rapidly this century. While many of the soft skills of communication, leadership, critical thinking and social sense remain relevant today,…

Disrupting the Disrupters

January 17, 2019

The advent of online education was a classic Clayton Christensen disrupter. That was a quarter of a century ago. Now the disrupter is becoming disrupted. Harvard professor Clayton Christensen described disruptive innovation as “a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves…

A man (Ray Schroeder) is dressed in a suit with a blue tie and wearing glasses.

Ray Schroeder is Professor Emeritus, Associate Vice Chancellor for Online Learning at the University of Illinois Springfield (UIS) and Senior Fellow at UPCEA. Each year, Ray publishes and presents nationally on emerging topics in online and technology-enhanced learning. Ray’s social media publications daily reach more than 12,000 professionals. He is the inaugural recipient of the A. Frank Mayadas Online Leadership Award, recipient of the University of Illinois Distinguished Service Award, the United States Distance Learning Association Hall of Fame Award, and the American Journal of Distance Education/University of Wisconsin Wedemeyer Excellence in Distance Education Award 2016.