Online Courses as Video Games

By Dr. Rodney P. Riegle,
Professor
Illinois State University

Online course offerings are becoming increasingly more common in education. Nearly three million U.S. students are currently taking university level courses online and more than half of all higher education institutions see online education as critical to their long-term strategy. The competition for online students will continue to escalate as more and more institutions realize that online education is a fast-growing, multi-billion dollar market.

Clearly, education is becoming a commodity and many educational institutions are looking to online education to improve their revenue stream. The competition for online students is bound to become more and more intense. The marketing of online courses, however, is still in its infancy. Courses designed like video games are one way to win this competition by appealing to the target demographic in a way that they embrace. A recent study found that 70 percent of U.S. college students play video games (32 percent even admit to playing video games during class without the knowledge of their instructors).
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Vantage Learning Releases Essay Scoring Software

Vantage Learning released I-Manage 2.0, its web-based management tool, which the company says "can accurately score essay responses; provide line-by-line feedback on spelling, grammar and mechanics; identify parts of speech for each word or phrase; and identify the readability level of the student's essay." (Businesswire)

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Jenzabar Offers Tool for Management of Non-Traditional Ed

Jenzabar, Inc. has released its Non-Traditional System (NTS) which the company says colleges and universities can use to manage non-traditional educational programs, including: continuing education, professional development programs, certificate programs, and degree completion programs. (Businesswire)

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ebrary Ships New Reader for PDF Research

ebrary has launched a new version of the ebrary Reader. The software application, available at no charge, turns static PDF files into research-ready documents that can be cross-referenced and searched online. (Businesswire)

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Instructional Blogging On Campus: Identifying Best Practices

By Stuart Glogoff Sr.
Consultant, Learning Technologies
University of Arizona

The University of Arizona’s Learning Technologies Center (LTC) provides centralized support for instructional blogging and hosts blogs for administrative units exploring new ways to provide information to students. In the instructional arena, faculty are integrating blogs into both online and blended learning environments. University administrative units are introducing blogging as a new communications and marketing tool in an effort to reach undergraduate and graduate students in more interactive ways. What, then, are successful academic blogging techniques?

Experiences collected during spring semester 2005 demonstrate this learning tool’s versatility. Instructional blogging was used in a wide range of courses including: Freshman Composition, graduate seminars in English and Philosophy, an upper level Spanish conversation course, art appreciation, and MIS. The applications are as varied as the disciplines adopting blogging. Faculty have introduced blogging to: promote peer review, foster student-to-student, student-to-faculty, and faculty-to-student interaction; discuss course readings; promote discussion and public comment; address class concerns; extend learning beyond the classroom; and develop writing skills because it encourages students to reflect on what they compose.
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Live! From Campus Technology: InfoComm 2005 Podcasts

If you missed this month's InfoComm 2005 in Las Vegas, you can hear interviews by Campus Technology editors on the floor of the show. Find out about the latest product releases and newest technologies for eLearning.

Audio files are available in MP3 and WMA.

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