Online: Trending Now
Unique biweekly insights and news review from Ray Schroeder, Senior Fellow at UPCEA.
Virtual Labs Coming of Age
Online: Trending Now #144 Have we finally arrived at a point where we can effectively teach laboratory classes online? Recently, the University of Pennsylvania announced that they will launch a baccalaureate degree at scale online next fall. They are not the only ones to offer entire undergraduate degrees online, but they are the first from…
Right-Sizing Online Classes
Online: Trending Now #143 A persistent source of controversy and contention in our field is the “right size” for caps on an online class. It it’s too large, there’s not enough individualized attention; too small, there’s not enough interaction and too costly. On behalf of UPCEA, I have the good fortune to talk with many…
Pedagogy, Andragogy, and Now Heutagogy
Online: Trending Now #142 Teaching adults is not the same as teaching children; done well, it affords the adults a level of autonomy, even including the opportunity to determine and direct their learning. Regrettably, we still find university instructors who teach their students as if they were in 19th or 20th century elementary or high…
Blockchain Securing the Future
Online: Trending Now #141 Securing networking, empowering dissemination of credentials by students; blockchain opens the doors to large-scale change in higher education. Much has been made of blockchain since it first enabled Bitcoin. Blockchain is a distributed ledger platform that has facilitated anonymous transfer of funds and much more. There are public and private blockchains…
Preparing for Future Jobs and Careers
Online: Trending Now #140 Jobs and careers are changing rapidly, influenced by emerging and maturing technologies and an evolving marketplace mix for human and AI skills and functionalities. It seems that the most popular book for summer reading this year at my university has been Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by…
Practice What You Preach
Online: Trending Now #139 We all are in higher education; we encourage prospective students to enroll; we extol the benefits of continuing to learn throughout life; the question is, how well do we practice what we preach? With a commitment to higher education and with many of us in professional and continuing education, one would…
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.