Online Learning

If you're going to miss the mark, make sure you do it for good reason, that's what I say. However, that isn't the reality when it comes to online learning. Life and responsibilities get ahold of us all and due dates come and pass. Finding a way to prioritize your assignments is key to a successful semester.

Most people would love to make a positive impact in societies around the globe. Participating in international assistance efforts not only helps other communities abroad but opens a huge knowledge base of what other poverty stricken societies really go through.

This is a wonderful time of year for most no matter where they are or what they are doing. But perhaps no time or place can be more memorable and important than a spring graduation ceremony for its marking of a major life achievement. That probably explains why a growing number of UMass’ online students find a way to ‘go traditional’ for a day and join their colleagues on campus to acknowledge an achievement that carries life- and career-changing implications.

It first occurred 64 years ago. That’s when, in 1949, the month of May was first officially designated as Mental Health Month. This year, the focus is on the mental health of young people. Some of the stats are staggering: An estimated 22.1 percent of Americans ages 18 and older-about 1 in 5 adults-suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.1 Mental disorders can also affect children. According to the National Mental Health Association (NMHA), mental health problems affect one in five young people.

A planned, tuition-free, six-week Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) intended to reach more than 40,000 students recently unraveled in six days, the reasons for which are painfully detailed in a report from The Washington Post. But as if this online disaster were not bad enough in its own right, guess what the course was intended to be all about? Ready? “Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application.”  That’s right! It was a program designed to teach the fundamentals of how to create an online course.

Dr. Wallace E. Boston is President and Chief Executive Officer of American Public University System (APUS) and its parent company, American Public Education, Inc. In a recent blog post, he filed a report about a University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education (GSE) conference entitled “Innovation in an Era of Disruptive Change.” At this forum, attendees heard from Dr. Jack Wilson, President Emeritus of the University of Massachusetts, who spoke on the topic: “Evolution or Revolution: Everyone Wants Universities to Change but Exactly How is Not so Clear.”

This is from a recent news release about the 10th annual survey of online learning trends: The 2012 Survey of Online Learning conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group reveals the number of students taking at least one online course has now surpassed 6.7 million. That’s an increase, they note, of 570,000 students since last year.   The release also mentions that thirty-two percent of higher education students now take at least one course online.