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However, some analysts warn
of financial danger. Moody’s
Investors Service this winter
took a gloomy look at higher
education, citing those drops in
government support and hikes in
tuition – while families already
are financially strapped. “Com-
bine that with concerns over the
value of a higher education in an
economy with limited job pros-
pects,” asked Moody’s analyst
Karen Kedem. That “contributes
to this issue of: Have we reached
a tipping point?”
Some say huge changes are
ahead, changes that are of major
concern to the governing boards
of most colleges and universities,
and online education attracting
tens of thousands of students
from dozens of countries is at the
forefront.
“
I attend the Association of
Governing Boards annual meet-
ings and this is issue number
one,” said educator Joe Layng,
Director of Learning Sciences for
Mimio, Newell–Rubbermaid’s
interactive teaching technologies
company. Online and blended
(
online and on-ground mix) alter-
natives to traditional educational
delivery systems are rapidly
gaining popularity.
“
What is troublesome to our
colleges is not simply online
courses,” he continued. “Indeed,
many embrace them, but there is
beginning to be a move toward
alternative credentialing. For
example, the recent efforts by our
leading institutions to provide
free online access to all courses
(
e.g., MIT), and their willingness
to certify that those who success-
fully complete the courses have
learned the same as a student en-
rolled in the on-ground or online
at the school, has the potential of
providing alternative credential-
ing outside of a degree.
“
Online can be great or it can
be lousy, just as on-ground can be
great or lousy,” he added. “What
online does, however, is to make
many of the teacher and student
interactions visible. Evaluation
by individual faculty of teach-
ing practices for the purpose of
personal improvement can ac-
cordingly be enhanced. Students
who may be shy often participate
more readily online. Since papers
are submitted online, automated
plagiarism checks are easier to
perform.”
The Present
