The newest numbers are available from Sloan, with online enrollments continuing to climb. The number of students taking at least one course online increased by 12.9% from the previous year.

The comments on the post at IHE are interesting as well. I think Gavin Moodie's comment that the distinction between online and face to face instruction will fade over time is a good one.

As the first commenter at the blog post on the Chronicle noted, people have been using Skype to collaborate across distances for a while now. But it is still a good reminder that distance is coming to mean less and less in academia. We can work with anyone. We can learn from researchers in India, Antarctica, Brazil, Pequot Lakes even when our research has nothing to do with India, Antarctica, Brazil or Pequot Lakes. Imagine a world where a Public Health researcher can learn how colleagues all over the world are addressing the challenges obesity and use that knowledge to propose local solutions. Or a researcher on educational policy can get feedback on a policy draft from experts in China and India and Canada.

Our research questions, and importantly, our solutions, can pull from the best in the world, not just the best in the country. The changes happening now are remarkable.

The University of Minnesota offers two degree completion programs for students who already have college credits. The two degree programs, BS in Applied Studies and BA or BS in Multidisciplinary Studies, are transfer-friendly for students whose credits are from outside the University of Minnesota.

Learn more about the University of Minnesota's online offerings at the Digital Campus.

Also, in a ROWE, since we’re looking for results only, not time logged, the guy who’s been getting paid the same as you to basically just ‘appear as if he’s working’ by schmoosing and staying late, gets weeded-out. The people who provide results are the people who have the job security. It doesn’t matter if they’re in the office or at the movies. As long as the work gets done, you have a job. Employees are happier and turnover goes way down in a ROWE.

I was raised like most people to believe that after you graduate high school or college you go out and you get the 9-5pm job. Put in your hours and maybe you receive enough compensation for what you really want to do with your life in your ‘free time’. Except, you can’t because you gotta do the laundry, take the kids to soccer practice, go grocery shopping… Ressler and Thompson opened up a huge opportunity to make a few changes and make work flow into your life, not something to which you schedule your life around. Give them a Pulitzer.

To read other reviews click here.

To read an Excerpt of “Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It: No Schedules, No Meetings, No Joke—The Simple Change That Can Make Your Job Terrific by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, click here

This has been going around for a long time. But it's a good video, and I'm going to show it in a training next week, so I dug it up again.

I like that the video points out the flaws in trying to collaborate in email; most of us have been doing our work this way for so long that the inefficiency is not always obvious.

Campus Technology online reports on a Gartner study indicating that Open Source e-learning/course management systems such as Moodle and Sakai are gaining ground on commercial systems. Part of this is attributed to the uncertainty created by the Blackboard lawsuit against Desire2Learn.

John P. Campbell's data mining project at Purdue is featured in the Chronicle this week. I first heard about this project at Educause Midwest in 2007; the project is much further now. Campbell and his colleagues are able to notify students when the data indicates the student is struggling, and students are responding.

The middle range of students is a big group - if this type of system can help them, then it certainly has promise.

I wonder how successful this program would be if students were more widely aware of it. Would they find it intrusive? Would they try to game the system by logging in more or clicking around the discussion area in order to make it seem like they are more engaged? What do you think?

Outbreak at WatersEdge also includes a teachers guide and health career exploration options.

Dr. Hargittai’s larger body of research relates to inequality and technology use. She has published on the demographic differences of users and non-users of technology and also on how people of different demographics use the same technologies in different ways.

“You know better than I that for many students class has come to consist of some listening but also plenty of e-mailing, shopping, news browsing, and gossip-site visiting. Many students say that the visual images on classmates’ screens are diverting, and they too eventually go off track and check e-mail, sometimes to return to the class discussion and sometimes barely so. Our faculty (and I, as well as many of your classmates with whom I have spoken) believe strongly that we need to do everything we can to make Chicago’s classroom experiences all they can be.�

I certainly understand the impulse to ban internet access in the classroom; I have observed classes with students surfing all manner of sites. It is distracting to the students nearby. It limits the depth of discussions you can have in class if students are distracted. Even in a large lecture class, I assume it is also frustrating to the professor. Most of us can tell when our audience is not listening.

Besides, the article noted that WiMAX will soon provide high-speed wireless internet access all over Chicago, likely including the University of Chicago Law School in the service area.

Thoughts? Leave a comment below.

You can view a movie of Viewfinder to see what it can do.

Viewfinder is reminiscent of Microsoft Live Labs’ Photosynth. But Photosynth relies on personal collections of photos, from what I can tell.

Using Flickr for source photos in Viewfinder adds a lot of power to the Viewfinder application. Flickr, as a collection, represents a huge amount of data and understanding of our (collective) surroundings. Flickr is fascinating now, and will be much more so in another 10 years, another 30 years. Adding Google Earth as a layer behind the Flickr collection extends our capacity to interact with and understand photos in Flickr.

Megan Anderson - Megan serves as the executive administrative assistant for Vice Provost Billie Wahlstrom. She also provides support to the TEL Team in planning meetings and events, such as the April 2008 ADEC Conference. Megan received her BA in Liberal Arts in 2000 and is thrilled to be back in the University of Minnesota community.

Tara Belter - Tara is a student in the College of Pharmacy. Tara's main responsibility with the TEL Team is maintaining the TEL and Lifelong Learning news channels. She enjoys working with the TEL Team on projects and is actively involved in promoting TEL by maintaining display cases at the Office of the Senior Vice President and Provost.

Sandra Ecklein - Sandra is a Portal Manager and works with technology literacy, repositories of online learning and other distance education, portal views, and research studies on the effective use of technology in teaching. She also serves as coordinator for the University's Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) project for all units outside of the Academic Health Center. She has a B.A. in English and a master's degree in liberal studies. She has worked at the U of M since 1996.

Sue Engelmann - Sue is an Associate to the Vice Provost in the Office of the Senior Vice President and Provost (SVPP). Sue's major responsibilities include working with Vice Provost Billie Wahlstrom to implement her strategic initiatives in distributed education and technology enhanced learning to use instructional technology strategically and effectively to enhance teaching, learning, and outreach activities. Before joining central administration eight years ago, Sue worked as an Extension Educator in south central Minnesota in community economic development, leadership and organizational development. Sue has a B.A. in Home Economics and a Masters in Education, both from the University of Minnesota.

Amanda Rondeau - Amanda is responsible for coordinating strategic initiatives that enhance the University's ability to effectively use technology to improve teaching, learning, and outreach activities. Prior to joining the University in 2006, Amanda was an instructional designer and multimedia producer, using technology to enhance and expand youth development programs at organizations across the country. Amanda has a B.A. in English literature from the College of St. Catherine and a master’s certificate in technology enhanced learning from the University of Minnesota.

Bob Rubinyi - Bob's main area of responsibility for the TEL Team is the Digital Campus initiative which seeks to provide students with transparent access to the University's online and non-credit offerings. This initiative includes improved non-credit registration, enhanced integration with course management applications, and acquisition of a constituent relationship management system to better serve students, faculty, and staff. Bob also serves as an Extension Professor with the University of Minnesota where his past projects have included co-authoring a federal grant demonstrating how the Internet could be used to promote economic development in rural Minnesota and helping to found the national Extension Children, Youth and Families Education and Research Network (CYFERnet). Bob received his B.A. from the University of California, San Diego and M.A. and PhD from the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

Chris Scruton - As part of the noncredit course initiative, Chris is developing templates and guidelines for instructors interested in creating materials to enhance their computer-mediated course offerings. He also works with the University of Minnesota Digital Media Center (within OIT), where he manages the technology-enhanced learning (TEL) grant and seminar programs and teaches short courses. Chris is completing a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Scientific and Technical Communication with a research focus on rhetorical uses of imagery, film, and other visual media.