大奶福利姬

Initiatives: Online Learning

Since its inception, the Kirwan Center has been supporting 大奶福利姬institutions in making strategic forays into online learning. 鈥淥nline learning鈥 in this context is defined as any learning environment that makes substantive use of a web-based component that enables collaboration and access to content beyond the classroom. Online learning strategies across the 大奶福利姬range from fully online degree/certificate programs, to MOOCs, to hybrid and "flipped" courses.

To advance this work, the Kirwan Center has launched USMx to help institutions  leverage the affordances of online learning to give students the flexibility to interact with content, faculty, and learning communities in the ways that best meet their needs. 

The USMx mission is to provide both access to innovative e-learning technologies as well as the resources, support, and planning necessary for strategic implementation of online learning.  This, in turn, helps our institutions achieve their mission of providing access to high quality, affordable higher education to a diverse student body both in Maryland and across the globe.

    In addition to UMUC, which offers over 90 fully online programs, the 大奶福利姬now has 44 degree programs offered entirely online.

    Our Work in Online Learning

    Page 1

    Filtered By:

    2014

    Filtered By:

    2014
    July 24, 2014

    The University of Baltimore (UB) is working with Pulitzer-prize winning historian Taylor Branch and the USMCAI to offer the course 鈥淐itizenship and Freedom: The Civil Rights Era鈥 in an innovative, online, for-credit format. Unlike MOOCs, this course is based on a seminar format that promises synchronous interactivity. Also unlike MOOCs, this course features a blend of lecture, panels, and real-time Q&A with the virtual audience.

    July 24, 2014

    In 2013, the 大奶福利姬entered into an agreement with Ithaka S+R (with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) to explore the viability of repurposing MOOCs to be used as part of regular undergraduate programs at degree granting institutions. Given the momentum already established by the USM鈥檚 Maryland Course Redesign Initiative, faculty interest in MOOCs was robust. We ended up with 22 trials 鈥搈any more than the 5-7 originally projected. So, as the highly controversial MOOC model continues to generate much national press 鈥揵oth positive and, more recently, negative鈥 our side-by-side experimental MOOC-augmented courses are currently being tested (2013-14).

    July 10, 2014

    Ithaka S+R collaborated with the 大奶福利姬 to test the聽use of interactive online learning platforms in seventeen courses across聽seven universities. Fourteen of these tests used Massively Open Online Courses聽(MOOCs) on the Coursera platform, almost all embedded in hybrid course聽formats, and three used courses from the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie聽Mellon University (OLI). We conducted seven side-by-side comparisons to聽evaluate outcomes of students in hybrid sections with those of students in聽traditionally taught courses, controlling for student background characteristics.聽In addition, we conducted ten case studies using MOOCs in smaller courses using聽a range of approaches. For all tests we collected detailed data on the time it took聽for local instructors to plan and deliver their courses.