Sunday, June 13, 2010

“Online classes clicking with students” plus 2 more

“Online classes clicking with students” plus 2 more

Online classes clicking with students

Posted: 13 Jun 2010 02:21 AM PDT

More and more, college classes are moving outside the brick and mortar building and toward a virtual offering. Western Nebraska Community College officials say students and teachers are embracing online courses for their offerings.

Garry Alkire, dean of student services, estimates 65 percent of students enrolled in summer classes are taking courses online.

"That was not the case five years ago," he said.

As degree options increase, college officials said online courses are increasing in popularity. It's a trend seen not only on the national level but locally as well.

Students seeking degrees in business administration, management information systems, accounting and business technology courses can fully complete a degree online, Marsha Blackburn, division chair of office/business and information technologies, said.

The college also has online offerings that allow students seeking to transfer business courses or two-year job readiness programs for those wanting to enter directly into the workforce.

Information technology is one area that WNCC has been moving forward in, bringing nearly all of its 11 courses into online offerings, including nationally-recognized programs like Microsoft training. WNCC has been offering health information management systems courses online for about four years now. General education courses are also offered online through the college. Tutoring is  available online for students as well.

The programs are driven not only by the desires, but also the needs of students, Blackburn said.

"We had a lot of working people who were taking classes at night or over their lunch hours," she said. "Through online courses, we are able to give them another option so that they can still take courses in person or online."

Sometimes, students find day-to-day life getting in the way of taking traditional courses. They need to get into the work force and are unable to attend classes because they have moved to another community or time commitments. Online courses allow more flexibility.

With WNCC having three campuses within western Nebraska, online courses also help increase offerings to students so that they do not have to be "site bound," Terry Gaalwsyk, vice-president of educational services said,

"If a student is able to take classes from another location, it opens up more options for them," he said. "Accessibility is key, especially in western Nebraska."

Flexibility is another key in online programs, Blackburn said. In most instances, students can attend classes at the originating site, which may be preferable to students who need to be in a classroom in front of a teacher. Teachers will record the session, which online students can view in real time or log onto a computer at another time to view the course. Recorded sessions can also offer a benefit for students throughout the semester, as they can go back and review material in a class if they were struggling or before a test.

Surprisingly, students taking online courses aren't non-traditional students, but younger students, Alkire said. The biggest majority of students taking online courses are those seeking to transfer to other programs or already in the workforce. Blackburn said students who do not live within western Nebraska also make up a contingency of the school's online students because of affordability.

Alkire stressed that a focus of the online programs is to offer students a dynamic classroom experience.

"Students deserve the classroom experience," he said, explaining that pre-recorded classes aren't recycled as they are erased at the end of each semester. Each semester, classes are begun and the instructor works with the students in that class.

Online coursework can take some more commitment on behalf of the students, officials acknowledged.

"The student has a learning responsibility," Alkire said. "It is college."

Online courses can also mean more work on behalf of the instructors. All proposed courses are approved and must follow a set of standards set by the college. Blackburn said training is offered to teachers. Often times, she said, teachers have participated in online courses themselves.

"With that personal experience, they have an understanding of what works and what doesn't," she said. "We try to gear the class as close as possible to a face-to-face course."

Students can also register for classes online. The college's website is available via www.wncc.net.

 


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Pioneering UAB Engineering Degree to Help Prevent Large-Scale Disasters Like Gulf Oil Spill

Posted: 13 Jun 2010 10:04 AM PDT

June 13, 2010

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - A newly created and first-of-its-kind graduate degree program from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Engineering will educate engineers and safety, health and environmental professionals across industries in the best practices to prevent expansive disasters like the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and Upper Big Branch Mine explosion in West Virginia.

The UAB Master of Engineering in Advanced Safety Engineering and Management (ASEM) degree will be offered totally online with a curriculum based in experiential learning and peer-to-peer interaction, says the program's director, Martha Bidez, Ph.D., a professor at the School of Engineering. An undergraduate degree in engineering is not required for acceptance into the program.

Bidez says the ASEM degree will help revolutionize safety practices across sectors with a curriculum focused on the No. 1 way to prevent serious workplace injury and disaster: prevention through design.

"We want the engineers who design systems and the safety specialists charged with protecting operations and personnel to share a common language so that system failures, human errors and other factors that can lead to large-scale disasters are minimized if not removed from the equation all together," Bidez says.

School of Engineering Dean Linda Lucas, Ph.D., says the school is justifiably proud of its new offering.

"Embracing the entrepreneurial spirit of UAB, we have designed a program that is not available anywhere else in the world and meets a crucial need," Lucas says. "There is no industry that safety engineering and management does not impact."

Bidez says the ASEM program's advisory board is who's- who of leaders in workplace safety, including John Howard, M.D., M.P.H., J.D., LL.M, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and Kimberly Scheibe Greene, the group president of strategy and external relations for the Tennessee Valley Authority who helped lead that company's response to its widely publicized coal ash disaster in 2008.

"Our advisory board members are a unique group of practitioner-scholars who will share their wisdom learned from deep and sometimes crisis-driven industry experience with adult learners in the ASEM graduate program through online discussion forums," Bidez says. "This offers our students unparalleled access to the most influential minds in engineering safety."

Other advisory board members are Deborah Grubbe, P.E., CEng., owner and president of Operations and Safety Solutions, LLC, and previously vice president of safety-change management for British Petroleum; Lisa Capicik, regional safety director for Brasfield and Gorrie, LLC; Timothy Kennedy, global human resource director for Valmont-Newmark; Fred Manuele, P.E., C.S.P., president of Hazards Ltd.; Charles Shaw, P.E., corporate safety and health manager for Alabama Power Company.

"The UAB School of Engineering has strong industry partnerships, and we are bringing many of those to bear with this new ASEM program," says Paul George, School of Engineering director of external relations. "We are very appreciative of our industry partners and their support for this new program and for all of our efforts in engineering at UAB."

Bidez says the ASEM curriculum, inspired by the program's industry partners, will offer world-class education in safety best practices on a worldwide and industry sectorwide basis. Course topics will include risk assessment, reduction and liability, ethical leadership, human performance and engineering design, as well as policy issues in prevention through design. The program can be completed in 18 months.

Enrollment opens June 19. Interested parties should visit the admissions page at the School of Engineering website and follow the link for Graduate Admission. Additional information is available by calling 205-934-6528. Space is limited.

About the UAB School of Engineering

The University of Alabama at Birmingham, an internationally renowned research university and academic medical center, is known for its innovative and interdisciplinary approach to education at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Its School of Engineering offers students real-world experience while they train in one of its degree programs, which include the only undergraduate biomedical engineering program in Alabama. Students experience cutting-edge research opportunities, industry co-ops and unique internships generated by the school's commitment to interdisciplinary learning.

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For-profit colleges draw attention

Posted: 13 Jun 2010 06:10 PM PDT

Carrillo's move from the community college to the for-profit university shows the allure of a higher-education sector that is growing so fast the federal government wants to rein it in. The 24-year-old, who hopes to own a business someday, said he was impressed by the ease of course scheduling at his new school and unconcerned about future debt.

"What good is cheap tuition if classes are so packed you can't even get in?" he asked.

But Congress and the Obama administration are concerned.

For-profit schools may be offering an educational alternative, but that choice often comes with crushing student debt, some observers say.

New federal rules, expected to be formally proposed in coming days, would tighten oversight of the industry. One much-debated proposal would cut federal aid to for-profit schools in certain cases if graduates spend more than 8 percent of their starting salaries to repay loans. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) also plans this month to begin hearings on the industry, examining recruiting practices and student loan default rates.

Supporters of the schools say the proposed rules could shut down hundreds of programs, undermining President Obama's goal of making the nation the world leader in college completion by 2020.

"It will have a horrendous effect on programs in California and nationally," said Harris N. Miller, president of the Career College Association, which represents more than 1,400 for-profit schools. The association, which wields some clout in Congress, is mobilizing to fight the proposal.

Nationwide, enrollment in for-profit colleges soared from 673,000 in 2000 to 1.8 million in 2008. The growth has been fueled in California and some other states by discounts and incentives the schools offer to help students apply credits earned online toward community college degrees.

For-profit schools such as the University of Phoenix, DeVry University and Kaplan University (owned by Kaplan, a subsidiary of The Washington Post) offer professional, vocational and technical training and serve a large number of minority, low-income and first-generation college students. But they face federal scrutiny and lawsuits for burying some students under mountains of debt.

Federal aid to for-profit colleges jumped to $26.5 billion in 2009, from $4.6 billion in 2000. Two-thirds of for-profit students receive federal Pell grants, which target low-income students and don't have to be repaid. Even so, more than half of bachelor-degree recipients in 2007 at for-profit schools fell into a "high debt" range of at least $30,000 in loans, a recent College Board study found.

"These schools lay it all out for students with Pell grants and student loans," said Stan Jones, president of a nonprofit organization called Complete College America. Students, he said, "don't feel like they are paying for anything, but it's really just like a credit card for higher education."

For-profit colleges rely more on federal aid than many other higher-education institutions. The aid helps offset tuition at for-profit schools, which averaged $14,174 in 2009, according to the College Board. The average for two-year state schools was $2,544.

California is in the vanguard of a movement toward cooperation between overstretched community colleges and for-profit schools. Its community college system, with nearly 3 million students, has the nation's lowest tuition: $26 per credit. Carrillo's credits at an outlet of the University of Phoenix near here cost $450 apiece. But community colleges in this state are so crowded that officials don't discourage students from attending for-profit schools or enrolling in their online courses to satisfy degree requirements.

For-profit enrollment surged more than 20 percent in California last year, while the state's 112 cash-strapped community colleges were reducing course offerings, canceling summer school and turning away up to half of applicants. An estimated 8,800 students, including Carrillo, transferred from the state's two-year schools to the University of Phoenix.

While the Obama administration seeks to increase oversight of for-profit schools, it acknowledges their significant role. Education Secretary Arne Duncan last month urged the sector "to get rid of bad actors." But Duncan added: "Among the for-profits, phenomenal players are out there making a huge difference in helping people take the next step in the economic ladder."

Korry is a freelance writer based in the San Francisco Bay area. Willen is associate editor of the Hechinger Report, the nonprofit, nonpartisan education news outlet that produced this article. It is affiliated with the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media, based at Teachers College, Columbia University.

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