Monthly Archives: September 2011

Meeting in the Middle with Blended Learning

September 30th, 2011 • Leave a comment

By Melissa Venable Blended, or hybrid, academic courses are gaining a lot of attention these days. While there is no universal definition of what constitutes a blended course, in the context of higher education it usually includes both online and face-to-face (F2F) components, ideally offering the best of both worlds – the convenience and flexibility [...]

A Guide to FERPA for Online Students

September 29th, 2011 • Leave a comment

By Melissa Venable The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, often referred to with the acronym FERPA, is a federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. This law applies to any school that receives funding from the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE), including online schools. According to an article published last year in [...]

The 20 Best Books for Language Lovers

September 28th, 2011 • Leave a comment

Language pervades everything, building and destroying as time marches ever forward.

Sign of the Times: The State of Cigarettes on the College Campus

September 27th, 2011 • Leave a comment

During the '40s and '50s, cigarettes were synonymous with sex appeal and sophistication. Smokers could light up just about anywhere, from airplanes to doctors' offices to their college dorm rooms. It wasn't until the early 1960s when health officials began warning against the dangers, with The Surgeon General releasing the first report linking cigarettes to [...]

12 Tools for Online Collaboration

September 23rd, 2011 • 1 Comment

By Melissa Venable As an online student, making connections and working with your classmates on school projects has an added layer of complexity due to the delivery format of your courses. You may all be in the same class, but logging in from different geographic areas and at different times. So, how can you complete [...]

Considerations for Online Lectures

September 22nd, 2011 • Leave a comment

By Melissa Venable Is the lecture dead? Many people have declared it so, especially in online learning environments where social interaction and active learning techniques are driving how online courses are designed and delivered. Traditional lectures have been implemented in much the same way for hundreds of years, since before books were printed in mass [...]

In the news: Classroom Salon

September 21st, 2011 • Leave a comment

By Melissa Venable Classroom Salon is a software application from faculty researchers and developers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). It is described as a "new way to build a community around digital media." The name conjures images of historical salons in which the elite social classes gathered to engage in conversation about literature, philosophy, and the [...]

Review: National Survey on Working America

September 20th, 2011 • Leave a comment

By Melissa Venable The National Career Development Association (NCDA) recently commissioned a survey to "assess the perceptions of today's workforce on the effectiveness of career counselors, the need for expanded workforce training opportunities and hardships implicit in selecting, changing or getting a job in the current economic climate." This is a lot of ground to [...]

40 Coolest iPad Apps for Language Learners

September 19th, 2011 • Leave a comment

You’ll find 40 awesome apps that will not only teach you the language you wish to learn, but immerse you in another culture as well.

Student Engagement and Online Learning

September 19th, 2011 • Leave a comment

By Melissa Venable While there are challenges related to student engagement in all types of learning environments, online delivery may include added obstacles. In a face-to-face course, instructors are able to directly observe students' behaviors and evaluate their attitudes and motivation levels at each lesson or class meeting. Online students are working in different physical [...]