What is modularization, and why has this become a buzz word in online education in recent years? This general session seeks to explore online course modularization, and the changing concept of “going to class,” particularly in humanities courses. As classes both on ground and online are unbundled, this reflects changing technology applications both inside and outside higher education; applying this unbundled approach in online humanities courses addresses challenges online students may experience with course content consistency, as well as the digital divide; creating comprehensible course content and unlimited access to information cultivates engagement in online undergraduate courses, and empowers students to continue pursuing college courses. As a point of emphasis, the presenters will use case studies from one course at Kaplan University, “Humanities and Culture”. As part of this presentation, the presenters seek to encourage conversation regarding an understanding of what the term “modularization” entails in online education, as well as how modular design, with its components of pre-and-post-assessment activities, clear learning objectives, and assigned reading and writing activities, empowers students, particularly in humanities courses.

Profiling elearning students is becoming a common practice in the field (e.g., Yukselturk & Top, 2013). Using a Web survey or questionnaire, an increasing number of learner characteristics and demographics can be studied in a form of data. Given this easy access to the collected data, researchers have attempted to take into account multiple (i.e., two- or more-way) profiling variables (e.g., gender and grade level) at once, in lieu of dealing with one variable at a time. This attempt makes the design of their study more sophisticated and more versatile. It also assists the researchers in finding hidden patterns of the learners and their behaviors (Shih, Jheng, & Lai, 2010). Most importantly, their study results enable the top management team to make informed decisions. One major advantage of two-step cluster analysis is it allows researchers to consider both continuous/numerical and categorical/nominal variables at a time as other clustering techniques, such as K-Means Cluster and Hierarchical Cluster in SPSS, are limited respectively, as Şchiopu (2010) pointed out.

In this phase of the investigation, we plan to (a) follow up on the recommendation for further research we stated in an earlier study on learner preference in the type of the elearning course and their use of social networking tools and (b) explore plausible patterns of learner characteristics/behaviors in relation to their use of social networking tools and choices over the elearning course types. That is, the secondary or archival data with a sample size of approximately 2,000 (undergraduate students of a U.S. southern state university) will be analyzed for the present quantitative study. The data were initially collected in a joint effort of the participating university and EDCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR) in 2013.
This short general session is intended to benefit university distance education management team members and other related policy makers.

The North American Network of Science Labs Online (NANSLO) is an international collaboration of institutions in the United States and Canada. We currently have three operational labs: North Island College in Canada, the Colorado Community College System and Great Falls College-Montana State University in the United States. NANSLO uses open source licensing to construct a network of internet controllable, real-time, teaching laboratories to make use and replication as simple as possible. NANSLO’s overall goal is to provide access to challenging inquiry-based laboratory procedures run on high-quality scientific instrumentation to students both outside and inside traditional laboratory environments.

A real-time online teaching laboratories require two components. Those components are the internet mediated interface that allows control of the scientific instrumentation and the procedures that guide the laboratory exercises. The NANSLO project has designed an interface that allows students to control and observe the instrumentation in real-time while still focusing on the science they are learning. Our laboratory interface can be accessed using any computer or tablet platform through the Citrix plug-in. Development of online procedures for student lab activities is ongoing and NANSLO’s procedures can be freely modified by faculty to suit any science course. Presently we offer more than 30 experiments in first year biology, chemistry, and physics courses. In this workshop we will present data showing feedback from students and faculty that have used the NANSLO facility in their course. We will also engage the audience in a discussion of online science education by allowing audience member real-time access to our laboratory equipment for exploration.

Today’s online and distance education programs are rooted in long-established practices created for individuals unable to relocate to centers of learning. Early distance education offerings included shorthand instruction and home studies, developed in the late nineteenth century (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2000). As new technologies became available, early programs evolved into radio and televised programs. Access to computers and the Internet moved distance education from the periphery of higher education to the mainstream (Johnson, Adams Becker, Estrada & Freeman, 2014).

The U.S. Department of Education (2014) reports that, in 2012, 5.4 million students who received federal financial aid were enrolled in distance education courses and that number is expected to grow. Today, students can choose from massive open online courses (MOOCs), competency-based programs, hybrid offerings, correspondence study in multiple formats (print, online, CD-ROM, etc.), subscription models, and typical asynchronous online offerings.

The future of distance education will be shaped by new models. The reshaping of distance education will include the blending of new technologies with pedagogical approaches resulting in lower costs and greater access for students. In this presentation, we will briefly review the history of distance education, examine today’s distance learning offerings, and propose three models for future distance education offerings including a new version of independent study, a community learning model, and an adaptive learning model.

In an era of tightening institutional budgets, ever increasing online enrollments, and greater calls for accountability from multiple directions, the need for online program administrators to continually assess the quality of their overall operations has never been greater. Measuring and quantifying elements of “quality” in online programs has been rather elusive especially as more learners are completing online courses and new Web 2.0 tools are transforming the teaching/learning landscape. This 45 minute general session will focus on implementing the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) Quality Scorecard.

The presenters will provide a brief overview of the OLC Quality Scorecard highlighting the nine categories (institutional support, technology support, course development and instructional design, course structure, teaching and learning, social land student engagement, faculty support, student support as well as evaluation and assessment) for any workshop participant unfamiliar with the instrument. Through interactive pairing activities, session participants will learn how the 75-indicator Online Learning Consortium Quality Scorecard can provide online program administrators with key performance indicators serving as a quality assessment and/or benchmarking tool.

The future is now! Today, institutions are using the OLC Quality Scorecard to produce actionable continuous improvement outcomes impacting on learning effectiveness and program improvement as well as informing accreditation efforts. This session will provide participants with hands-on takeaways and insights about how to implement the scorecard in their own organization.