July 23-26, 2023, DLA2023 will be held at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel, in Jekyll Island, Georgia. The DLA symposiums are specifically designed for those involved or interested in the administration, management, planning, and evaluation of distance learning programs.
The Distance Learning Administration Conference is sponsored by the Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration and The University of West Georgia.
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March 20-23, 2023, Texas Digital Learning Association‘s Annual Conference (in person) in Galveston, TX.
Instructional Connections is a sponsor of this conference. Additionally, we are presenters.
Tracia Forman and Jessica Sanchez, UTRGV
Presentation given at the Texas Digital Learning Annual Association Conference 2022, Galveston, TX
Increased online enrollment has results in the use of supplementary instructional support to enhance effective course delivery. Use of an instructional team approach plays an invaluable role in student success.
UTRGV-TxDLA-Presentation-3.23.22[78]
Academic Coaches and Student Success in Higher Education.
Published in the Journal for Distance Education. May 31, 2023.
(2023) Academic Coaches and Student Success in Higher Education, American Journal of Distance Education, DOI: 10.1080/08923647.2023.2210491
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08923647.2023.2210491
Education technology has experienced steady growth and adoption even before the pandemic, with edtech investments reaching $18.66 billion in 2019. However, the COVID-19 crisis has affected around 1.6 billion students, most of whom migrated to online platforms to continue their education.
More than a year into the pandemic, online learning has seen enormous changes. And despite the crisis slowly receding, experts believe online education will continue to grow.
Here are five major online education trends that will shape the learning landscape globally.
Nano-learning is a learning modality where the student receives condensed, bite-sized information across a shorter time frame. It provides learners with quick and entertaining content that holds on to their notoriously shortening attention span.
Examples of nano-learning include short soundbites or one-minute videos seen on platforms like TikTok and Twitter.
Researchers argue that nano-learning is effective because it follows the Pareto principle: 80% of learning outcomes result from applying 20% of effort learning. In addition, nano-learning supports different learning styles, including visual and auditory learning.
Massive open online classes or MOOCs saw exponential growth during the pandemic. Coursera, for instance, recorded 640% more enrollments from mid-March to mid-April 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. Meanwhile, Udemy also recorded a 400% enrollment surge between February and March.
MOOCs continue to gain traction among employees, who use online learning platforms to earn micro-credentials and nano-degrees — both qualifications that demonstrate mastery in specialized skills.
MOOCs are a powerful tool for professional advancement that brand giants like Amazon and Google partner with Udacity, a popular MOOC provider, to give their employees an avenue to earn marketable skills.
Gamification is a strong contender in the future of online education. It’s the use of game-based elements like point scoring and competition to improve learning outcomes. And it has been enjoying steady growth. In 2015, the gamification industry was valued at $2 billion, but experts predict that that figure will increase to $11.42 billion by the end of 2021.
The factor that makes gamification effective is that it increases engagement. In a 2018 survey, 89% of participants said that if their task is gamified, they feel motivated to complete it. In fact, it gets them into a competitive mood!
Students also perform better when learning is gamified. A 2020 study showed that challenge-based gamification enhanced student performance by up to 89.45% compared to only attending lectures.
Open Educational Resources or OERs are learning and research materials stored in the public domain or released under an open license. These can be used and distributed by learners at no cost and with no or limited restrictions.
More and more higher education instructors are aware of OERs. And faculty awareness of OER increased by 5 percentage points from 2019 to 2020. These faculty also expressed a stronger belief in the quality of OERs.
With students paying an average of $1240 on books and supplies every year, OERs are expected to be an enduring online learning trend in higher education distance learning courses. And because OERs are free, students don’t have to deal with the effects of high textbook costs, like taking fewer courses or getting lower grades due to working more hours.
eLearning Industries predict that over 47% of learning management tools will be enriched with AI capabilities within the next three years. AI, after all, delivers a significant impact on online education.
Here is a .pdf of the partial findings of this research that were presented at the North American Management Society virtual conference. The principle investigators are completing their research study and we will supply a full report in Q4 2021.
Dr. Suyoung Park and her colleague Dr. Petra Robinson at Louisiana State University researched the performance levels of graduate students and the support that graduate students receive when they interact with academic coaches in intensive online courses. They looked at students in three different online courses. Among their findings was the overarching ethos that academic coaches provide an effective framework for student support.
The University of Louisiana at Lafayette recently had an article published in the Journal of Teaching and Learning in Nursing, entitled “Determining roles and best practices when using Academic Coaches in online learning.” The article acknowledges the continued growth of online learning and identifies the role that academic coaches maintain in an online learning environment, and highlights best practices when using academic coaches in an accelerated online course.
Teaching and Learning in Nursing. Official Journal of the Organization for Associate Degree Nursing. Volume 15, Issue 4. In progress (October 2020). This issue is in progress but contains articles that are final and fully citable.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1557308720300482?via%3Dihub
2020 CHLOE 4 Report: The Changing Landscape of Online Education (CHLOE): Navigating the Mainstream (https://www.qualitymatters.org/qa-resources/resource-center/articles-resources/CHLOE-4-report-2020)
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