Special report on virtual schools

Van Dusen, C. (2009) eSN Special Report: Beyond the Virtual School eSchool News, Nov 1

Because of the volume of stuff that comes through my portal, I don’t usually cover k-12 reports, but I’m including this one because it provides some excellent examples of what I like to call hybrid learning (reduced but not eliminated face-to-face [...]

New book on ICTs in higher education

Guri-Rosenblit, S. (2009) Digital Technologies in Higher Education: Sweeping Expectations and Actual Effects Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers

From the publisher’s synopsis:

The visible gap between some sweeping expectations echoed in the 1990s as to the immense impacts of digital technologies on higher education environments and the actual reality, are discussed in this book. The various chapters [...]

Book review: Distance and blended learning in Asia

Latchem, C. and Jung, I. (2010) Distance and blended learning in Asia New York/London: Routledge

Hong Kong

Overview

This is one of the best books I have read recently on distance education and has lots of good material on e-learning in Asia, as well. It casts its net amazingly wide, from Turkey and Syria in the west [...]

More information on The University of the People

McCrea, B. (2009) Breaking down the traditional barriers to education Campus Technology, Sept 23

An interview with Shai Reshef, the founder of the University of the People, gives more details, as the first enrolments of 158 students started on September 10.

It will be interesting to see how this scales up, and whether enough qualified volunteers come [...]

Motivation, group work and community in distance education

The Journal of Distance Education, Vol. 23, No. 2 is now available online.

The four research articles in this issue address the themes of motivation, group work and community in the online distance education environment.

In the Dialogue section of this issue Randy Garrison challenges us to think about the foundational principles and practices of distance education [...]