Alternative Predominant Modalities to Videos in Humanities Courses

Posted on by Katie Kormanik

Videos are the predominant modality of teaching in this new wave of online education. For humanities courses in particular, the bare minimum advancement is that videos digitize the traditional course lecture, allowing students to learn at their own pace, anytime and anywhere. More complex videos heighten production quality, especially when the lecturer is on-camera, and … Continue reading Alternative Predominant Modalities to Videos in Humanities Courses

Online Education Delivery Platforms

Posted on by Katie Kormanik

Having created online courses with Udacity, Udemy, NovoEd, and OpenEdX, I’ve been compiling thoughts on components of an online education platform. Frustratingly, the features I describe below are not all available for any one platform, but alas, we see time and again that we are both advanced and restrained by technology. Whether we like it … Continue reading Online Education Delivery Platforms

The Flipped Classroom

Posted on by Katie Kormanik

The modern educational model is to “flip the classroom.” Rather than being “talked at” for hours with little interaction between students and instructors, students learn the information on their own – whether it’s at home in their pajamas at 3 am – and come to class to discuss it and do other collaborative activities. Today … Continue reading The Flipped Classroom

Looking Forward Toward Education’s Potential

Posted on by Katie Kormanik

Skeptics are calling online courses the “Wal-Martification of higher education.” You get what you pay for, they say. But just like traditional brick-and-mortar courses, there are low-quality and high-quality MOOCs. If we judge the potential of online courses based on disengaging, non-interactive videotaped lectures, we’ll handicap our ability to envision the extent to which they … Continue reading Looking Forward Toward Education’s Potential

Online Learning Part II: MOOCs

Posted on by Katie Kormanik

In my post Online Learning: Current Developments and Future Predictions, I discussed some implications of free online courses, including accreditation and obtaining degrees. These massive open online courses (MOOCs) are constantly evolving, and I’d like to continue the conversation. Let’s start with the following question. What differentiates a MOOC from a regular online course? Probably … Continue reading Online Learning Part II: MOOCs